As the OP doesn’t seem to have quite read anything that’s been posted in response, but keeps making his extremely extended argument over and over without addressing any fact established since about 1938, I’d say you could do both.
I find it far more fascinating that Dvorak was a submarine commander than the inventor of an alternate keyboard layout, myself.
It may have been. What is more accurate is to say that Sholes did the initial selecting of the QWERTY layout to reduce jamming by putting letters that are commonly pressed in sequence in different areas, and his process was probably not very scientific. When it was created, and for years after, there were vanishingly few touch typists; most typists were hunt-and-peck, as they are today, and typing speed was hardly an issue. You must also know that in the late 19th century there were many competing keyboard layouts, including ones by companies that continued to be players for another century. They all converged on the QWERTY because of market forces, not because of a conspiracy by Big Typing. Why? From the few formal studies conducted by somebody who wasn’t Dr Dvorak we see that there may be a slight improvement in efficiency, but not enough to be economical.
Read The Fable of the Keys. It’s an easy read by respected economists with no financial interest in the results of their study.
Dropzoneand everybody else
My apologies for not making it clear in every recent comment by adding quote marks that I am quoting somebody else but I thought it was obvious it was a copy and paste quote from the context of this dialogue.
I am not so dumb as to deliberately spoil my own argument by plagiarizing because I don’t do that except inadvertently as in this case and I don’t do that as a matter of principle any way.
Even fourth graders these days know that teacher will find out in a flash and as I have mentioned upthread I used to be a teacher myself.
Such mistakes are easily made in a conversational or chat environment or a thread such as this one.
I should do a better job of proof reading before I post a comment.
You should too.
I am for reasonably sure that you know the difference between spamming and plagiarizing.
Dropzone there is more that one kind of interest that can prejudice the managers and or planners of a study.
It is abundantly clear that guys you think are credible because they had “no financial interests in the study” had ample reason to distort or even fabricate the actual results .
Can you explain otherwise why they destroyed their data ?
This is an extraordinary departure from the usual standards of academic or any other kind of research.
Did you see the quote to the effect that your man had a big emotional and professional stake in proving that Dvorak is inferior or at least no better than qwerty?
Professional economists mostly have staked their personal credibility on economic theory that states that the market always settles on the superior technology.
Admitting that Dvorak is better than qwerty in a heresy in terms of conventional economic thinking and economists who have publicly announced for years that the market always knows best are not exactly the people to put in charge of a test that might just prove them wrong.
Remember the destroyed data !!
Your excuse that you weren’t plagiarizing because we should have known you were plagiarizing, therefore making it not plagiarizing, has got to be one of the most convoluted bits of reasoning I’ve seen in years.
Yes, I do, and because you did not show that you were quoting an article by someone else I could only assume that you were the author, Randy Cassingham, who also sells Dvorak-oriented material on his linked website. The first was plagiarism, the second spamming.
Randy indulges in an odd form of “my post is my cite” by referring to himself in the third person. I googled “Randy responded to that one way back in 1995 (copy of that here)” because you had not previously mentioned anybody named Randy, et voilà! there was that page as the only result. If you are the owner of that page and are not Randy but augmented his essay without mentioning that you did, you, as a former teacher, should know that’s also a no-no, and the punishment for that is to go stand in the corner.
The horse you are backing was slow out of the gate before you were born, and never caught up. Use whatever keyboard layout you like; there’s nothing and no one stopping you. Just don’t come barging in here preaching the True Word like a shaggy-haired prophet and call us dupes of an industry that no longer exists. Dvorak, and as one of his prophets you, lost the race, and other technologies are nipping at the heels of keyboards themselves.
Wow. The world’s economists are at the core of a conspiracy to keep us using an inefficient keyboard, when they’ve had 75 years to use it to find a way to twist money out of us instead. And just the way the Illuminati can never resist rubbing our noses in their superiority, they have made the superior version available on nearly every computer ever made… but brainwashed us into ignoring it!
Just think, we could have had 8% more Stephen King novels by now. What a loss. Goddamned economists.
If we could convince our masters that kids using cell phones with Dvorak thumbboards send more texts, we could cause a chasm in their ranks.
More texts = profit.
Hang in there folks because if you haven’t figured out yet that I am not busy and that I am having a good time then you aren’t too bright.
The more responses I get the longer this thread will get and in the end that means more people will notice it and read it and learn about Dvorak which is after all my original goal.
For drop zone after my apology and my pointing out that I forgot to use the quote I was wrong and have already admitted it. This is not a court of law.
If you want to paint me as a plagiarist go right ahead but anybody with a modicum of sense will realize that I simply forgot to acknowledge that I was quoting since everybody who is computer literate these day (including me obviously enough ) knows how long it take to catch out somebody cheating this way.
I’m quite interested in what response you have if any to the quote itself since it looks like rock solid evidence that the guys running the study had plenty of reason to fudge the results.
They would never be allowed on a jury in a case about Dvorak versus qwerty but all the people defending qwerty here are somehow convinced their motives were as pure as the wind driven snow.
And incidentally my speed has picked up about five to ten words per minute in the last few days.
If the bad weather holds another couple of days and I remain housebound I think I will gain another five or ten.
I hope you keep a fire extinguisher nearby. At the rate you are going, your keyboard may melt and you’ll need it.
Gosh yes. I learned to type as a child, and I never had any problem with FORTRAN or COBOL. But Windows PowerShell … Gaghhh.
Worse, I’m left handed, and on a standard US keyboard, brackets are under my RIGHT little finger – the exact finger that is most difficult for me to type accurately.
When the mathematicians first starting devising programming languages, they wanted specialist keyboards with scores of key to map the symbols that they wanted to use.
When the comp. scientists starting devising interactive programming environments, they wanted hunt & peck typing, because they didn’t have key-punch operators to re-type their batch-entry programs
My self, I can type any 4 normal characters, like .OR. in less time than it takes me to find | once.
I’d love to have one of those split ergonomic keyboards with the keys {}|\ conviniently placed in the centre split where I could reach them with a streach of the index fingers.
Why on earth would anyone care enough to hide such results? Are you contending that there is some great QWERTY consortium whose wealth would be lost if the truth about Dvorak came out? That the whole field of economics would somehow… implode if QWERTY were suppressed or abandoned?
I haven’t seen anyone here “defend QWERTY” as such - pointing out that it’s the world universal standard and that no argument to change it has ever been found convincing is not the same thing. You seem to think you have made some overwhelming case for a switch to Dvorak and are utterly ignoring the repeated point that the speed increase is trivial and that there’s almost no use for high sustained typing speeds any more… and that nearly everyone in the world could switch to Dvorak in about three minutes flat if they wanted to.
No one’s wanted to in almost 80 years. You might want to consider that.
So… you’re not just a Dvorak convert but a new one?
I’m not sure this exchange even holds amusement value any more. It’s starting to feel like teasing the mentally ill.
I have an old one, but it won’t work on today’s machines. It was a gift, and I forced myself to learn how to use it on my, then, PC. It was faster than any previous keyboard, before my current Mac Chiclets keyboard that is. 
But you raise an interesting question. Why not have a split keyboard with a handful of extra keys in the split, and allow you to map those keys anyway you see fit?
I just looked, and under Windows 7 you can not only add either right-hand or left-hand Dvorak to your standard keyboard list, but throw an item into the tray that will let you select any enabled keyboard in two clicks. You can even customize the icons - say, boring blue for US-standard, and poppycock pink for US-Dvorak-right-hand.
Great Dvorak-oppression conspiracy smashed. Hulk happy.
Nope. Not the way it’s played here. You play honest or you get called on it. You have to assume some readers are not as computer literate as you, and you have to accommodate them by following some basic rules of intellectual honesty.
Should I respond to the original article or what are apparently your conspiracy theory additions? “Rock solid evidence” that completely lacks any evidence for its assertions, nor even explains exactly what they are? And “Randy responded to that one way back in 1995 (copy of that here)?” Where is a link to the response? “Remember the destroyed data?” WHAT destroyed data? When was it destroyed? Who are these authors who you claim destroyed their own data? Just what the hell WAS the data? Enquiring minds want to know.
Nobody here has said that the Dvorak keyboard might not have some improvements over QWERTY. We just said that your horse lost the race and no amount of beating will make it win, especially since keyboards themselves are on the way out. Tell me: Do you still use a Betamax VCR and spread the gospel of its inherent goodness? Hell, do you still use a VHS VCR? An Apple II computer instead of a Windows/Mac/Linux box? FTR, there’s an Apple IIc parked not ten feet away that has a QWERTY/Dvorak switch right above the keyboard; I used it once.
This is worse than a jury trial, pal. This is the SDMB, where the readers know how to research and present an argument, and recognize a load of horseshit when they see it. You say you were a teacher? Then I assume you expected your students to show their work rather than make bald assertions. We expect no less.
The keyboard I use at work is a 1997 or 1998 vintage Microsoft Natural keyboard, purchased by my previous employer after my carpal tunnel surgery. When I was laid off, they made me take it with me. It still works fine, though the numbers have worn off most of the keys. Added bonus - no one ever wants to use my computer because they hate the darn thing so much! 
This is a QOUTE from upthread 7:42 pm drop zone
WHAT destroyed data? When was it destroyed? Who are these authors who you claim destroyed their own data? Just what the hell WAS the data? Enquiring minds want to know.
It’s upthread someplace in one of the links but since I am having a good time I will hunt it up and post it word for word and be VERY SURE TO ATTRIBUTE.
But in might be a while because I am expecting company.
Just so you know, citing your own posts doesn’t count. Citing other blogs and unverified claims doesn’t count.
Yes. Yes, you are. Try not to smudge their white coats.
MODERATOR NOTE: Amateur Barbarian, this is not acceptable comment in this forum. Personal insults are not permitted here. You’ve certainly been around long enough to know that. I’m not issuing an Official Warning, mostly out of the goodness of my heart, and partly because your comment was, indeed, funny… just not appropriate.