The Wall Street Journal never fails to address topics that seem obscure but are awfully relevant to current affairs. This time the paper turns its attention to the growing battle over keyboard layout due to the proliferation of full-keyboard smart phones.

It’s QWERTY versus Dvorak and the fight is getting ugly.

It’s QWERTY versus Dvorak and the fight is getting ugly. That is, as ugly as a keyboard layout melee can get.

A little background: The first typewriter’s keyboard was arranged in alphabetical order, which proved to be poor design when two keys near each other were pressed in succession. The keys would jam. So inventor Christopher Sholes shuffled the letters around, placing the most commonly used keys away from each other. Thus, the QWERTY keyboard was born.

But there’s another keyboard layout, the Dvorak, which is not widely used. The Dvorak has been around since the 1930s, when an efficiency-minded inventor named August Dvorak placed the most commonly used letters, like vowels, on the “home row” (on a QWERTY, the home row starts with ASDF… and ends at single and double quotes). Read more…

admin Mobile Devices, Rants ANSI, August Dvorak, Christopher Sholes, Dvorak, efficiency, jailbreak, QWERTY