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Comment by waynecochran | Hacker News Reader

I thought about trying Dvorak over 30 years ago but quickly discovered it is a wasted effort since everywhere I go there are QWERTY keyboards. What am I suppose to do, carry a Dvorak keyboard around with me (with the right adapters as well)?

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I’ve been Colemak for 11 years.

For quick things (<5 min) I can still type decently on QWERTY.

For longer I just set the OS to Colemak and then back again when I’m done. Win/Mac has Colemak and Dvorak built in. I hope most linux distros do as well.

Assuming you don’t need to look at the keys.

Do you.. look at your keyboard while typing? I don’t even have letters on my keyboard.

I was about to write a similar comment, but I think they're referring to other people's keyboards.

I’m still confused. The letters being in the wrong location doesn’t affect me in the slightest. My laptop is printed with QWERTY keys, and I type on it with DVORAK. What’s the issue?

And if I need to use someone else’s computer I just type in QWERTY. It’s not like I forgot how.

> And if I need to use someone else’s computer I just type in QWERTY. It’s not like I forgot how.

I think that's the sticking point; not everyone can/does keep 2 layouts in their head. My QWERTY is certainly weaker than my preferred layout.

I forgot qwerty very quickly. I can do it at medium-speed when I looking at the keyboard, but it's not touch-typing

Can I install bunch of low level keyboard handling stuffs from my GitHub repo to your laptop to get keyboard work for me? I need to Google something.

If you wanted to do this, you could use a programmable keyboard like QMK. Physically toggle the switch and the keyboard would send to the QWERTY physical layout equivalent to the one you typed. This would enable fast switching and no faffing about with software configuration.

And we've come full circle back to the original

>"What am I suppose to do, carry a Dvorak keyboard around with me (with the right adapters as well)?"

point of the original post. Which is genuinely the only real answer if you have to interact with machines you can't customize to your liking, and is a bad answer.

I think most of the common alternative keyboard layouts are available by default on Windows, Linux and Mac

So does every OS have a simple and quick mechanism to switch keyboard interpretation? Is this practical?

Don't know about linux, but (left) alt-shift in windows does.

Only after you've set up the keyboard layouts. Most computers won't have your favourite layout set up and ready to go.

macOS has multiple ways to switch. Configurable keyboard shortcuts or you can keep an input picker in the status bar.

Laptops often force you to, given there's no real standard among them. Much as I love mine, the placement of FN and other special keys in a reduced area trips up my touch typing when I switch among them, especially when coding (when I use ctrl sequences more).

Yes. Some of the time.

I was in college a few years ago and it was pretty common to see portable mechanical keyboards...

I’ve typed Dvorak about 15 years. I just switch the keyboard layout on the other person’s computer if I’m going to do any significant typing and can’t use my laptop. (A rare need anymore.)

When you were considering learning in the 90s, this would’ve been harder to do, but that changed. It’s too bad you didn’t reconsider learning every decade or so!

I tried several years ago, before mechanical keyboards were the norm, and most keyboards you couldn’t even swap keycaps around.

Anyway. I generally agree. Switching it extremely difficult. And logging in to a Dvorak Remote Desktop is insanely annoying.

How is switching difficult? Most OS’ have it as an option in keyboard settings.

Is this really even practical?

This is what I've done on every PC I've used professionally since 2002. Tweak OS setting, start typing.

Mixing keyboard layouts works well on Windows 10+ or macOS. Remote Desktop problems were a thing with WIndows XP, but I can't remember having problems more recently.

The biggest problem can be booting to single user/safe mode or entering disk encryption passphrase before the full OS is loaded. Or your keymap doesn't translate to running VMs inside your OS. I type in Dvorak, I've been meaning to try the workman layout. The solution is to have a keyboard you can program. Then the above minor inconveniences don't matter.

You are supposed to switch the keys mapping to dvorak...?

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