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Comment by Cushman | Hacker News Reader

This really shouldn't be downvoted, it's basically the only thing keeping folks from switching. Talking as someone with a super-custom Dvorak vim layout, here-- you'll run into software that just won't work without switching to US.

In practice, the combined strategy of Dvorak+QWERTY command keys, application-specific layout settings, and a rarely-used keybind to swap manually makes this manageable on a day-to-day basis, but it's definitely not ideal. Blame the dumb legacy technology driving keyboards, if you're mad.

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> This really shouldn't be downvoted, it's basically the only thing keeping folks from switching.

The thing that keeps me from switching is I learned to touch type long before having access to keyboards that could be reconfigured.

While that may be less common now, I suspect lots of people still become proficient keyboarders long before learning how to change keyboard layouts, and at that point switching is a cost rather than a benefit.

I've been using Dvorak for over 10 years. The only 'shortcut' I have is a couple of shell aliases: alias h=ls alias hh=ls -l

I prefer Emacs to Vim though, perhaps that's less affected since shortcut keys are influenced by meaning rather than position? (e.g., Ctrl+N, P, F, B for moving nextline, previousline, forward, backward).

Vim's the worst for this, since it has a mix of the two. hjkl is positional, but then iasdftweruvnp are all memonics, and I'd want to move those. (Insert, After, Substitute, Delete, Forwards, unTill, Word, End, Replace, Undo, Visual, Next, Paste).

Actually, I guess most of the keystrokes are placed by meaning, not position.

If you're stuck no the cursor movement keys being on the home row, then it's tough. My solution was to do no remapping and just learn the new locations for hjkl. It actually ends up being not that bad. In dvorak j and k are right next to each other in the left hand and work very similarly to how they work in qwerty. Also, h and l are typed with the index and pinky of the right hand respectively giving a pretty nice left/right mental picture. So I don't think it's bad at all. I also don't use hjkl all that much, preferring bigger movements like w/b, f/F, H/L, {/}, C-d/C-u, C-f/C-b, etc.

Switching back to qwerty in vim is pretty rough for me though. Enough of the mnemonics that I use on a regular basis get translated to muscle memory in my head that it's tough. I used to be able to switch back and forth easily when I was at a job that had me on qwerty keyboards regularly. But now that I'm not I've lost a lot of it.

Yeah, it actually would not be a big deal except that after you move hjkl, you need to move dhtn, and then... I wound up with a couple of slightly different mnemonics, but not enough to be really confusing if I sit down at a strange terminal.

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