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Comment by copperx | Hacker News Reader

I agree. I learned Dvorak about 15 years ago, and even though typing is much more comfortable, I wouldn't do it again.

I wish I knew about the increased cognitive overload. Sure, typing English and code is great, but once you get to shortcuts in different applications, things get rather ugly. I use multiple computers, and switching back and forth between QWERTY and Dvorak is no problem, but every time I switch to a different program I have to THINK about which layout I am using and because I never switch my keyboard keycaps, I have to think and LOOK which key I'm pressing.

Also Control/Command C, X, and V are impossible to do with one hand while holding your mouse unless you remap keys or create macros. It's a mess.

I've never felt comfortable about shortcuts ever since.

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> Also Control/Command C, X, and V are impossible to do with one hand while holding your mouse unless you remap keys or create macros.

I took the, uh, hard way on this one: For every OS I have used in the last 20 years I have figured out how to write a program that intercepts keystrokes and rewrites them so that when I am holding ctrl or alt, my keyboard temporarily reverts to Qwerty. (I type Dvorak.)

My current iteration involves using systemtap to, uh, monkey-patch the Linux kernel. Which works... surprisingly well?

https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-to-monkey-patch-the-linux-ke...

Code and older version here: https://github.com/kentonv/dvorak-qwerty

Though these days I'm starting to think this guy's version based on /dev/input might be a better way to go: https://github.com/tbocek/dvorak (This even works on Chrome OS.)

MacOS has this keyboard layout built-in, but in multiple attempts I have never been able to get myself to like MacOS, so...

> Also Control/Command C, X, and V are impossible to do with one hand

One of the motivations behind Colemak was to make an efficient layout that didn't move C, X, or V.

Mr. Dvorak back in 1936 couldn't have known about cut / copy / paste ;-)

Of course if you just stick to a non-QWERTY layout and never use QWERTY, you don't have this problem. My solution to that has mostly been to use an external "mechanical" keyboard that I flash with a colemak layout. But on laptops I often type on that keyboard and use software to switch and that's worked OK for me too. Some programs use the key code instead of the letter, and that messes me up occasionally on laptop keyboards (maybe VS code, from memory?).

Colemak does keep C, X and V in the same places for this reason, but if you're a big hotkey user, that's only a small part of it.

> Also Control/Command C, X, and V are impossible to do with one hand while holding your mouse unless you remap keys or create macros.

Disagree, I do this easily without macros. One important thing is that in Dvorak, I find myself using Right Ctrl much more heavily than QWERTY; I have to use Right Ctrl (using left thumb or index finger) for C and V (using left pinky) for maximum ergonomics. Unfortunately, some laptop and/or mechanical keyboards think it's fashionable to omit keys such as Right Control, and I flat out refuse to buy them because they're so hostile to my typing needs.

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