QWERTY Keyboards on a touch screen are still the stupid!
Whether you, like me, beleive that QAZWSX keyboards make far more sense, especially in a machine learning world, I think we all agree a layout designed to circumvent jamming typewriter keys doesn’t make sense in modern society on modern devices.
a layout designed to circumvent jamming typewriter keys
BTW, the supposed origin of the QWERTY layout is uncertain, and the story about it being based around avoiding adjacent bigrams has been called into question often enough (PDF, see pg. 169ff). You can see there plenty images of typewriters that had O next to U still (I was left of U), which if you think about bigrams makes no sense as especially back then it was one of by far the most common ones.
The supposed slowdown is also false as explained in the PDF, as early typewriters were used to receive morse-code, and could type at 60-80 words per minute while the best morse senders capped at ~30, meaning that no slowdown would have been perceivable anyways.
One proposed origin could be that the early still-not-quite-there developments were based on most people using 4-8 fingers to type not all 10, and alwys the inner fingers and discarding the outer ones.
there was also the video detailing how the layout actually formed from a morse code machine with individual letter keys and putting commonly used and similar in morse code letters together, and spelling typewriter with the top letter row was a coincidence. Much like every other theory I didn’t bother delving too deeply and verifying it myself.
I have never heard of qazwsx but I do agree that there isn’t much value in qwerty any more though for me its not only touch that benefits from change
What I found when I first learned about DVORAK and other layouts and why we use QWERTY, there were some studies that had shown that there wouldn’t really be any significant increase in proficiency using different layouts, and the time needed to readjust to a new layout just isn’t worth it.
I use Dvorak, but it has nothing to do with statistics for me. When I switched to Dvorak, it felt more comfortable on my hands. My typing speed is essentially the exact same, for example, and I don’t think you could find a measurable difference depending on which I use. But qualitatively – it feels more comfortable.
I actively practiced with whatever tool gnome had built-in at the time, it’s called klavaro or something. It’s a very simple practicing app.
It took about two weeks for me to get familiar enough to be able to work in it without having to switch back sometimes.
The trick is just like with learning a new language: don’t switch back unless you absolutely have to, not when it would be convenient/faster.
Within a month or two you’ll be typing Dvorak like you’ve never even heard of qwerty.
Some things to note:
At the time I learned dvorak I was not fully typing qwerty with ten fingers, so ymmv.
I’m actually using programmer’s Dvorak; the difference is in the placement of the non-letter characters.
I don’t necessarily recommend it over regular Dvorak; if you find yourself regularly using other people’s machines, I’d probably recommend against it. Every major OS has Dvorak built-in, but not programmer Dvorak.
Just try to do a few training exercises every day, those really helped me.
And as a bonus, you already know 2 letters! The A and M are the same as on qwerty. And if the other letters on the keyboard distract you, you can always tape over them.
I’ll like to see more info of this “QAZWSX” keyboard layout if you have any. I did a quick search for it but ended up in Reddit with a comment you made (I think?. The usernames were almost identical). I don’t like the AI part on a keyboard though.
Do you mind if I send you a link as a private message? This was honestly just me thinking aloud this morning and I really don’t want to be accused of shilling.
What is a QAZWSX keyboard (couldn’t figure it out by web search), and what does keyboard layout have to do with machine learning? I’m genuinely curious.
Thanks for replying. It sounds like you basically get two (or some number well below one keys per character) keys and the set of possible characters gets somehow distributed between the two “real” keys, then the keyboard uses a predictive algorithm based on previous input to guess which keys were meant to be pressed.
IMO I’d be willing to try out an implementation of such an idea so long as I could run the predictive algorithm locally on my phone. I do think that current autocorrect + predicting which keys were pressed would require a lot more training data than just a generic autocorrect to get it working sensibly, and I think it would take a lot longer to converge to the user’s “style” if it ever does.
I absolutely think it has to be a local implementation. Especially with all these new processors with their AI benefits. Qualcomm T2000 with built in Skynet. I’m taking the piss, but the latest chip announcement was similar.
I just offered to private message someone an implementation because I didn’t want to be accused of shilling but since you and @happyredditrefugee are both interested and it would look dodgy to be offering so many private messages, I’ll just post here is that’s okay?
Qwerty is bad for physical keyboards, but it’s actually pretty good for mobile especially for swipe typing. I use coleman-dh on an ergo split keyboard but i still use qwerty on my phone because it just works better.
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