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Just how this came to be is a narrative that remains murky and – ironically – far from fixed. It's a story that offers insights into the sometimes unexpected pace of technological change, and one that's peopled by unsung inventors and obsessive tinkerers. It taps a fervent debate that most of us are oblivious to.
The earliest typewriters were cumbersome, moody machines but there was nevertheless an order to their keys that any English-speaking user could readily glean: they were arranged alphabetically. So why change this logical layout? Legend has it that Qwerty – known for the jabberwocky-style word formed by the first six letters of its top row – was dreamt up with the express purpose of slowing typists down. One character even lectures another about it in a Paulo Coelho novel.
In fact, the Qwerty layout was concocted to prevent keys from jamming – or at least, that's what most experts have tended to believe. The letters on a typewriter are affixed to metal arms, which are activated by the keys; on early models, if a lever was activated before its neighbour had fully come back down to rest, they would jam, forcing the typist to stop. Enter Christopher Sholes. Born in small-town Pennsylvania in 1819, Sholes was many things, including newspaper editor and Wisconsin state senator. He was also one of a team of inventors credited with building the first commercially viable typewriter. Having already tried to build machines for typesetting and printing numbers, Sholes' adventures in type began in 1867, when he read an article in Scientific American describing the Pterotype, a prototype typewriter invented by one John Pratt. The article sounded the death knoll for that "laborious and unsatisfactory" instrument, the pen, soon to be set down in favour of "playing on the literary piano".
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Snotnose on Monday December 19 2016, @12:18AM
I first heard of this in the 70s when I had a TRS-80. Got a program to rejigger my keyboard to Dvorak, dunno if it made me faster or not as I was still learning how to type (first program I bought with that TRS-80? Typing Tutor).
But at work I had a keyboard I couldn't rejigger. So now I've got 2 layouts in my fingers, and I have to use my head to figure out what to do. Then got a job where I lived on a VT-100 at work, couldn't rejigger the keyboard. So QWERTY it is.
For me the big thing with typing is the same as my editor (vim). I don't know how it works. My fingers do. I think what I want and my fingers make it happen. I can do everything I need without leaving the home position.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 19 2016, @12:52AM
Heh. The fingers know it all, that's for sure. If, for some reason, I actually LOOK AT my keyboard, I get lost. The only reason to ever look down, is to find the home position. Found home, look away quick before you screw it up!!
Had one of the guys at work walk up to me one day. He's from Mexico, and moderately literate. He asked me a question, I turned my head and explained what he needed to know, but he wouldn't look at me. He was staring at my fingers on the keyboard instead. "How can you type without looking?" I answered, "Well you can't type when you ARE looking!" "But, how do you know where the keys are?" "They haven't moved since the last time I looked, have they? It's like shifting a car, or a big truck. Think about it, and you'll screw it up.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday December 19 2016, @07:42AM
If, for some reason, I actually LOOK AT my keyboard, I get lost.
Something similar......
I get lost the instant I make a mistake. My fingers freeze, something's wrong, the muscle movement wasn't right, halt halt halt.
Sure enough I will find an error within one character of where the fingers stopped.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Tuesday December 20 2016, @01:36AM
I don't freeze when I make a mistake, I know I made it and know why. Typically it's either stretching for a little used key (30%), or right finger wrong hand (e.g. bird finger left hand vs bird finger right hand. Think e vs i). (oh yeah, 70%).
The whole left hand/right hand has plagued me for almost 40 years now. Why? hellifino. Good thing is I know immediately I messed up.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 19 2016, @03:53AM
Societal inertia is a bitch.
Autocad lets you fully customize their interface, so when I did my first big project on it, I did - took my most common commands down from 3 steps to 1, felt like I knew what I was doing, and then.... after about two months of "learning Autocad," I opened my drawings on a colleague's machine - he didn't have (nor want) my keybindings, and I can't remember how to do the most basic drawing manipulations because what I've trained myself to is useless outside of my personal machines.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday December 19 2016, @04:43PM
That's what's great about the -p parameter in emacs :)
"Hey, open with that user's settings over there, here."
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday December 19 2016, @04:57PM
Should've put this in my first post :P
But most of my custom emacs bindings either fall under
1) Assign a binding to something that doesn't have one, or has a multi-chord binding, to the reserved C-c series
2) Bind a new feature from a plugin.
I try to limit tweaking existing bindings' behavior to do more what I expect, and learn the existing bindings as often as possible unless they're really annoying.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 19 2016, @05:13PM
emacs brands you as a member of a particular cult to start with...
I suppose Autocad could make keybindings easier to transfer, say onto a USB stick, or, God forbid, "the Cloud," then you plug that into your colleague's machine and he can temporarily use your bindings. But, then, to make it really "multi-user-friencly" it would somehow need to identify who is driving the mouse/keyboard/tablet at the moment and use their bindings at that time (camera/facial recognition) - that would be a cool system, if it worked.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday December 19 2016, @08:14PM
If closing and reopening all the necessary files is a big pain, and unbinding and rebinding everything in a running session to a different config doesn't work cleanly, yeah you sound kind of SOL :P
Emacs is supposed to have a "desktop save" feature where you can close and reopen it and it still has all files open but I've never tried it myself. Presumably AutoCAD is slightly more complicated than plaintext files ;)
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday December 20 2016, @12:19AM
The real problem with life is that it's not just emacs and Autocad, there are dozens of apps out there, and no cohesive system for user customization.
Maybe someday, if we ever get a Linus for the Desktop.
🌻🌻 [google.com]