Hacker News Reader

Comment by loup-vaillant | Hacker News Reader

> Another thing which comes with all alternative mappings: you need to be able to change all your devices (desktop, mobile) to your new mapping,

Desktop and laptop, sure. Mobile (which I assumed meant a palmtop such as a smartphone), not so much. If you change the layout of your keyboard, you will touch type. This is a very different kind of memory than the typical hunt&peck. Phone virtual keyboards are even more different.

In practice, my dekstop and laptop use the Bépo layout (a Dvorak-like for French), and I kept Azerty (French Qwerty derivative) on my phone. The discrepancy never caused me any problem.

View on HN

> Phone virtual keyboards are even more different.

Why? I type on an iPhone keyboard without any assistance as fast as on my keyboard. I'm almost touch typing. Even if you have to look at the phone's keyboard—you are way faster if the keys are at their expected place on the keyboard (which is QWERTY in my case).

Edit: If you disagree don't downvote, rather express why you disagree

Regardless, 2 thumbs are very different from all 10 fingers. Not the same memory. When I touched typed Qwerty, reaching the "O" meant straightening the right ring finger. On a phone, this means placing the right thumb somewhere.

Very different. Though I didn't realised how dissociated those could be before I used my Dvorak-like layout.

How on earth do you accomplish that? Or, do you mean that you don't actually touch type on a real keyboard either?

I believe that my years of touch typing experience are the reason I hate typing on glass so much. I follow the text I'm writing and not the keys I'm pressing, so with no physical feedback about the locations of the keys, my text is an endless stream of aggravating typos requiring laborious correction.

I really miss my Blackberry. Every phone since has felt like the designers calculated the experience to be just one notch less annoying than the threshold at which I would actually pound the damn thing to bits with a sledgehammer.

It's also worth the time spent to become accomplished in both (bi-keyboardal, I call it) for touch typing, in my opinion. I use dvorak at home on the desktop and qwerty everywhere else. Monday morning at work I'll start typing gibberish for a few seconds sometimes until I switch gears, then I'm back in the groove.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com