[DUG] OT Mouse

[Cameron Hart]

block the incoming support calls from his mum and that will lower his stress and save your keyboards.

 

Cameron Hart 

	Flow Software Limited 

 

		 

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+64 9 476 3569 x910 

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+64 21 222 3569 

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cameron.hart at flowsoftware.co.nz <mailto:cameron.hart at flowsoftware.co.nz> 

 

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From: delphi-bounces at listserver.123.net.nz [mailto:delphi-bounces at listserver.123.net.nz] On Behalf Of David Brennan
Sent: Wednesday, 2 November 2011 2:14 p.m.
To: 'NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List'
Subject: Re: [DUG] OT Mouse

 

Aside - this thread should now really be "OT: Keyboard", surely ?  :)

 

Very amusingly true! 

 

Does anyone else find that the Microsoft Natural 4000 keyboard breaks rather more often than it should? Or is one of our developers who has gone through 3 of them in that many years worthy of his reputation as the Keyboard Exterminator?

 

I use the Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro myself and find it much better than the 4000 but given they stopped making them years ago (the 4000 replaced them I think?) I have to hoard them carefully... fortunately they also seem much more robust than the 4000, don’t think I’ve had one break yet.

 

Cheers,

David.

 

 

From: delphi-bounces at listserver.123.net.nz [mailto:delphi-bounces at listserver.123.net.nz] On Behalf Of Jolyon Smith
Sent: Wednesday, 2 November 2011 1:16 p.m.
To: NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List
Subject: Re: [DUG] OT Mouse

 

> And in those early days, a keyboard layout that caused jams would lose
> out to one that didnt but I am unaware of contests in early days on
> alternatives to QWERTY.

If you read the details about those early contests you will find that the competitors to QWERTY were far from slouches themselves, often coming within spitting distance of the productivity of the QWERTY layout but consistently falling slightly short.  It's hard to argue that those alternatives therefore suffered from jamming and that the anti-jam design was QWERTY's only advantage.


Jamming issues would have slowed down competitors far more significantly.  There is surely more than one way to skin the jamming cat and some of those competitors would have employed those alternative approaches.  Yet QWERTY consistently bested them, sometimes by only a small margin but still.  Consistently better is consistently better.

Bearing in mind that at that time there was no entrenched body of experience with QWERTY - each entrant into those early competitions would have had a far more equal footing in terms of comparing performance with others.

 

 

> A contest now on boards with typists of similar experience on both would
> be more interesting.

 

Studies conducted now would be very difficult to conduct with a reliable "baseline" of equality on the part of the entrants.

What has been observed more recently is that providing training in alternatives (e.g. Dvorak) sometimes results in better performance than those same people previously obtained on QWERTY (even setting aside the now discredited results of the earliest tests that "proved" Dvorak's superiority).  However, it has also been observed that providing additional training on QWERTY also leads to improved results for QWERTY typists.

It really should come as no surprise to learn that training someone to type efficiently with a given keyboard results in greater efficiency on that keyboard.  :)

The bottom line is that individuals may find alternatives to be preferable or even more efficient, but unless you can replace all existing QWERTY skills in all keyboard users with equal proficiency in an alternative AND replace all QWERTY keyboards in existence with that alternative in an instant, then any alternative simply isn't going to gain sufficient traction to realistically replace QWERTY as the de facto standard keyboard.

Which then begs the question, why bother trying when it will take so much effort and has such a small chance of succeeding ?

The answer to that usually comes back as : "Because QWERTY isn't the best, it's an inferior layout designed to slow us down and we owe it to ourselves to find a better alternative".


Except that this is, as previously laboured, is merely popular misconception;  not actually based in fact.

 

 

Aside - this thread should now really be "OT: Keyboard", surely ?  :)

 

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