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In my current situation it's kinda difficult for me to type this, as you will realise as you read the rest of this entry. But before I go straight into what is the problem, I need to talk for a little while about keyboard layouts.
The traditional QWERTY keyboard layout was designed a long time ago. It was designed so that all of the keys that commonly follow each other in the English language were specifically place far apart from each other, to prevent typewriter jams. Today, of course, this doesn't happen, because we don't use typewriters, we use computers. However, we still mostly use QWERTY.
Now, I've been wanting for quite some time, (a few years) to get a Dvorak keyboard. Dvorak is an alternative keyboard layout designed for the purpose of increasing typing speeds. All of the commonly used letters in the English language are included on the home row, including all of the vowels. You can see a map of the Dvorak layout here.
Now, as you can see on that page, all of the keys are merely a rearrangement of the keys on a standard US keyboard layout. Meaning that, in theory, you could simply get your keyboard, pull out all of the keys, and place them in their new spots.
Which is where we meet our tiny little problem.
I've moved across seven of the thirty three keys that need to be moved on my laptop keyboard, and I have three keys which are very difficult to press. It's currently a pain for me to type an O, an N, or an apostrophe. Meaning my fingers currently hurt a bit from trying to press each of those keys several times whenever I want to type them.
I still have the layout set to QWERTY, (at the moment, I can still only touch type with QWERTY) but seven of the keys are in the wrong spots. (which doesn't really matter, because I can touch type with QWERTY anyway.)
I cannot change the layout to Dvorak until I actually have in front of me a Dvorak keyboard. And even then, I have to learn to touch type again. An inconvenience so huge it's probably the main reason we still use QWERTY.
Very inconvenient to type indeed.
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