Comments on: Dvorak Was Probably Wrong About A Typist’s Fingers Traveling 20 Miles In A Day

By: patorjk

patorjk — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:22:20 +0000

No worries, I probably should have explained how I was handling finger placement somewhere. Basically, I assume all the users fingers are on the home row in the correct position. When a key is being pressed, I do the following:

- If the new key is hit with the previously used finger, move that finger from its old position to the new position (if the same key is being hit twice, a finger does not need to move).
- If the new key is not hit with the preciously used finger, move the previously used finger back to the home row and then move the new finger to the new key.

By: Mario Klingemann

Mario Klingemann — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:33:11 +0000

Oh sorry, I just discovered that you are actually taking the fingers into account. Sorry for rambling.

By: Mario Klingemann

Mario Klingemann — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:31:48 +0000

That’s a great idea! Though I wonder about one thing – do assume a one finger typist in your measuring of the way? I think that you should at least separate the keyboard into a left half and a right one and measure the distance from the last known position in each half. I think i personally use some kind of a 3 one the left, 2 one the right finger system, other people might use all 10. I guess it would be interesting to add a hand model on top of your system.

By: patorjk

patorjk — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 03:25:32 +0000

Cool, thanks

By: Andy Bonjour

Andy Bonjour — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 13:52:57 +0000

I enjoyed this post and passed it on to the programmers in my life. particularly my wife who used to use a dvorak for fun.

By: patorjk

patorjk — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 16:04:33 +0000

I think I may have learned to type on one of those things. When I was little I took a typing class where we had old, non-electric type writers, though I mostly just remember being frustrated with them.

Anyway, factoring in a vertical plain with large spaces would probably impact things somewhat, though at worst I think it’d probably double the numbers. And it’d also bring up the question of whether Dvorak was talking about the total path distance of one’s fingers, or the distance they would crawl.

Either way though, his 20:1 ratio in typing distances would still be way out of whack.

By: sloat

sloat — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:28:05 +0000

I don’t remember exactly how much modern typewriters were different from keyboards, but it wasn’t that much.

However, my Dad had a really, really old typewriter that was completely mechanical — not electric at all — and it would put holes in anything but card-stock. I’m not 100% certain how different the spacing was between keys, but there was definitely vertical spacing between the rows.

Could that have had some kind of impact on Dvorak’s estimates? Even still, 20 miles does seem a bit of a stretch.