I have been typing in the Dvorak keyboard layout for 22 years (since 2003). This is since before Colemak was invented, and significantly longer than I had ever been typing in QWERTY (15 to 18 years, depending how you define "typing"). Now that Colemak is a widely available, built-in alternative — it's in macOS since 2011, and Windows since 2024 — I feel that I would advocate for it over Dvorak to anyone who is considering abandoning QWERTY. I may even decide to switch to Colemak myself.

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I've just finished hacking together a simple little program to transcode my "dvorcodes" for when entering on a QWERTY keyboard. I've created a new project on SourceForge and I've uploaded the code and a pair of pre-compiled executable JARs (one for Java 5 and also a re-worked version that's been tested on Java 1.4.2).

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I've recently been playing with OpenSolaris and Solaris Express DE running in VirtualBox. They're fine so far (except audio isn't working) but I stumbled on a usability issue that was nearly a show-stopper: dratted QWERTY layouts! The GNOME GUI for switching to Dvorak doesn't work, and setxkbmap₍₁₎ can't find the rules file for dvorak either (they don't seem to be installed where the man page indicates)...

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Okay, so I hate working in Windows, but on my employer's equipment at least, I must live with it. After having had this machine replaced twice (faulty Dell hardware) and rebuilt more times than I can remember (Windows BSODs), for a total of at least 3 system migrations this past year, I thought I'd better keep a list of what free software to install on top of Windows, and what adjustments to make, so that at least I don't feel like I'm wearing a straight jacket. Here goes:

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This post was originally published at sinewalker.blogspot.com.au on 27 March 2006.

I prefer Dvorak keyboards to QWERTY, which confounds my work colleagues no end :-)

I've been typing on Dvorak for about 3 years now [ed: That is, since 2003]. The main reason I use the Dvorak keyboard layout is because, after 15 years of six-finger typing on QWERTY, I decided to learn to touch-type, and Dvorak is very easy to learn (I learnt it in 2 weeks, back to my old typing speed after a month).

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