Attached Link: Paper

> Quote - Dvorak is miles faster. Just is. You can almost double your typing speed by learning it. I know a couple of legal secretaries who type upwards of 120 wpm with Dvorak. But it takes a bit of effort to learn after years of typing QWERTY. QWERTY was developed because typists on manual typewriters using the much more rational original layout were typing so fast that the keys were jamming. So QWERTY was a way to slow down their speed (put the most commonly used letters in the left hand, for instance). So it's not the worst. It's just not designed for modern keyboards.

Highly debatable.  This is a rather old myth - try a quick google search.  It was adjacency of frequently paired letters in the original key layout (i.e. th) that caused jams and resulted in the switch to QWERTY, not an attempt to slow typists. The study which indicated that the DVORAK layout was superior was conducted by for the Navy by one Anton Dvorak (sound familiar?) who happened to hold a patent on that layout!  What a surprise that his experiment found it superior.  Generations of typists, however, have not.  DVORAK is immediately available on any modern keyboard, but it remains nearly unused.

This myth is now so engrained that it has spawned a number of tests and studies which have generally indicated a insignificant mean variation in speed by experienced operators.  For anyone with a genuine interest, google the article by Liebowitz and Margolis for an overview of the genesis of this particular myth.  This lays out the standard arguments for lock-in and path dependence.

In any event, I guess we agree that calling it the worst possible is a bit of hyperbole. Klebnor

Lotus 123 ~ S-Render ~ OS/2 WARP ~ IBM 8088 / 4.77 Mhz ~ Hercules Ultima graphics, Hitachi 10 MB HDD, 64K RAM, 12 in diagonal CRT Monitor (16 colors / 60 Hz refresh rate), 240 Watt PS, Dual 1.44 MB Floppies, 2 button mouse input device.  Beige horizontal case.  I don't display my unit.