Re: Alphabetical Ordered Keyboard

I think that the point about the grandmother is that there are still 
people out there who haven't come to grips with computers (believe it 
or not). My father is one - although in his case I have no doubt that 
he will remain ignorant of computers till the day he dies.

Anyone who has had zero experience of keyboards but has learnt 
the 'abc' - most if not all English speakers - would find hunting-and-
pecking on an alphabetically arranged keyboard much easier than a 
QWERTY. And given that it has been shown (e.g. at 
http://www.mwbrooks.com/dvorak/counts.html) that an alpha layout is 
no worse than an QWERTY, there's no harm done if that person isn't 
likely to use more than a single computer.

When we English-speakers, at least in my neck of the woods (England) 
are taught the alphabet, it is reinforced by means of a rhyme that 
goes:

ABC,
DEFG,
HIJKLM;
NOPQ,
RSTU,
VWXYZ.

Therefore it would make sense to me to have the line breaks at these 
points:

ABCDEFG
HIJKLMNOPQ
RSTUVWXYZ

And so, with the help of MSKLC (Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator, 
http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/tools/msklc.mspx) I made a 
keyboard layout that has this format.

If interested, you can get it here: 
http://www.typocheck.co.uk/dvorak/layouts/


--- In [email protected], "pbrun01" <pbrun01@...> wrote:
>
> I'm not familiar with that software, so I can't offer an opinion on 
> its functionality.
> 
> That said, I think the topic of purely alphabetically arranged 
> keyboards has come up before here. I don't think that arrangement 
of 
> keys would offer any benefit over qwerty in terms of ease of use, 
> economy of finger movement, etc. It would probably be worse to 
switch 
> over from qwerty to an alphabetical arrangement because at least 
with 
> qwerty there is an element of familiarity. 
> 
> I'm not sure why the grandmother mentioned in the text would have 
an 
> easier time emailing with this arrangement of keys. Presumably a 
> grandmother would be fully familiar with the qwerty keyboard. 
> Even "hunt-and-peck" typists would have an easier time with qwerty 
if 
> that's all they have ever hunted and pecked on.
> -Peter
> 
> 
> --- In [email protected], "koshkinsoft" <koshkinsoft@> 
> wrote:
> >
> > What do you think about this program http://www.comfort-
> > software.com/alphabetical-ordered-keyboard.html ?
> > 
> > With this program we can make not only alphabetical ordered 
> keyboard 
> > but any layout (without having to buy a new keyboard :).
> >
>