In article , "Phil Kane"
writes:

On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 21:33:06 GMT, Jim Hampton wrote:

Or, perhaps, you are using a
most modern keyboard - Dang! That sure looks like a ... um ... gee, the
layout looks very much like those old typewriters.

Did the "Dvorak" key layout not catch on ??

Nope. Why should it?

There was never any real need for a "Dvorak" key layout except perhaps
to Dvorak. :-)

In middle school in the midwest in 1948 us students watched a
typing champion do 150 WPM continuous on an all-mechanical
portable typewriter while also carrying on a conversation with some of
the students from the stage. He let us proof-read what he had typed
and nobody could find any errors. That was with the old "QWERTY"
key layout that was already old and standard. It is now older and
still standard. It works.

[notice a resemblance to the old morse-manliness of high rates in
CW? :-) ]

The typing champion was actually GIVING A PERFORMANCE. It
is NOT necessary to do high word rate on a keyboard to produce
words for communications. Office typewriting throughput is typically
anywhere from 30 to 60 WPM for clerks/secretaries working from
handwritten scribbles of the staff...which they must all convert into
proper formatting, paragraph indentation and so forth. If they are
doing essentially copy typing (just a few changes here and there from
an already-formatted typewritten page) they typically do 50 to 100
WPM.

The Teletype Corporation celebrated their 500,000th teleprinter made
roughly a quarter century ago. Then it was a gold-flashed top-of-the-
line half-mechanical, half-electronic model that was prominent in
trade shows of the time (looked damn good in key lights). All those
Teletype teleprinters used the "QWERTY" key layout.

All those "teletypes" were used in COMMUNICATIONS. Nobody
grouched and whined about their speed of 60 WPM (early models)
or 100 WPM (later models). Neither did any of them require a
human modem operating them, just anyone familiar with the old
"QWERTY" key layout and one or two working fingers. :-)


And then there are those of us who believe as a matter of faith that
the F-keys belong on the left, the Ctrl key belongs just above the
left Shift key, and the Alt key belongs just below the left Shift
key, and other assorted differences from the Windowz key layout.

Tsk, tsk, tsk, Phil. Are you in a snit because you failed to cash in
on some recent Microsoft legal tangle with another jealous entity who
wanted $$$ that MS got? :-)

Do you need a different keyboard layout for you computer(s)?
That's almost entirely possible...the only exception being those keys
which are hardwired into the keyboard's own little microprocessor.
I can do it in a single program running at DOS, to any new key layout
desired...it will echo the desired character for an existing key. It won't
relabel the keytops, though, don't ask too much of software...:-)

Want to negotiate such a program for yourself? No problem, just
contact me at my mailing address (it's been in print at least 900,000
times). I only charge about a quarter of small-scale attorney billings
so it is a bargain! You'll even get the source code. Computer code,
that is... :-)

LHA