Right as I switched to Dvorak full-time, I ended up breaking my arm at the elbow (7 weeks ago). I was back on the keyboard with 2 hands after a few weeks but didn’t switch back to Dvorak until this week. Surprisingly. the brain retained almost the entire layout save a few special keys, and speed dropped back from about 40 to about 35 wpm. Now, I’ve resumed the quest toward my qwerty speed (incidentally, I can not currently complete a qwerty speed test…I keep switching to Dvorak when I attempt to do so!). The biggest issue I noticed with the Dvorak down-time was the considerable drop in accuracy that I’ve been overcoming again as my brain remaps Dvorak/Qwerty layouts again.

One other note of interest…during the two weeks I was strictly one-handed, I had attempted the one-handed dvorak layout and learned about 2/3 of the letters in that period…speed was very slow and it is quite a stretch for small hands like mine, but it was a rather fascinating experiment and I think I could have achieved basic proficiency in another week or so, though speed would have taken much longer…the fingers had to travel a considerably longer distance to “roll” from letter to letter.

Sadly you’ll loose the benefits of being able to mouse with your right, and do the shortcuts with your left hand. This only suits a right hander anyway.

If you are a left hander, you can use the CTRL/SHIFT Insert/Delete combos instead.

If it’s a real pain, OSX let’s you run Dvorak but with the regular keyboard shortcuts, pressing the modifier in effect flips the layout. You might be able to do the same kind of thing on other OSs.

Probably by fluke, but Q and W fall above the command keys on an Apple, which is handy for closing tabs and windows.

Chording on one hand might cause some strain.

Some other alternative layouts keep the zxcv keys in the same spot (Qwerty)m ainly for this reason.

Using a mixture of cases, characters, numbers, and symbols, I type about 80 wpm with the QWERTY layout. My goal this year is to achieve at least 3/4 of that speed in Dvorak and I hope to surpass it next year. I now know the layout with the exception of about half a dozen symbols (which I know placement of, but am not yet practiced and speedy). The threshold I have used in the typing software for advancement is 35 wpm. (Originally, I tried 45 but quickly realized this was not realistic at the outset and throttled it down.) In most cases, I could hit 30 wpm after learning a few more keys in just one session, but those next 5 wpm sometimes took several days or longer providing the repetition and practice needed. With letters only, I’m now averaging over 40 wpm, again with only about 15 minutes a day.

I am just now beginning the next phase of learning as I become practiced in the final few symbols (that differ in layout from qwerty), and am starting to type an hour or two for general purpose using dvorak for some applications and qwerty for other applications. For example, I might type a chat in a window mapped to dvorak and enter search terms on the browser using the conventional layout. As I am only two days into this phase, I do often find I’ll get confused between layouts…I’ll try to hit “r” in qwerty and I keep tapping its dvorak location…then a few nearby locations as I question, “Where’d the qwerty R go?” I’ll also often hit j for h and h for j (more commonly mistaken on qwerty). It’s rather fascinating, actually, as I can feel my brain reprogramming for the two layouts and learning how to switch between them.

With this next phase, I would expect my speed to begin to pick up more quickly over the next few weeks, so I’ll leave a follow-up in the near future. I am very curious to see if and when I get to the point of matching or exceeding my qwerty speed…hoping to reach 90 – 100 eventually but it will certainly take time for the brain to fully transition.

Other than occasional qwerty confusion (which I believe has more to do with the threshold of learning I am currently crossing), my qwerty speed appears not to be impacted, either favorably or adversely.

Phone should not have Dvorak keyboards IMO. The Dvorak layout was designed so typing is spread between hands evenly. On a phone that means more moving from one side to the other (in portrait mode at least). I believe a layout should be designed for phones separetely from the desktop layout because typing with one or two thumbs is much different than typing with all fingers.

I needed the additional letters ÅÄÖ so I started to look at the Swedish variants. I liked that Svorak A5 placed special symbols on the letter keys, but I preferred Svdvorak’s placement of ÅÄÖ since it kept the punctuation keys (, and .) in the original Dvorak positions. From there I just went with feeling, putting the special symbols I use the most (mostly for Vim, programming and LaTeX) easily accessible. I also had to move Q since there wasn’t enough space for it in the regular place on my unstaggered keyboard.

* Are there others you would recommend I check out?

Depends on your primary language and if you want to go standard or customized.

* Can you talk about what I’d have to do to be able to use others’ computers easily if I don’t use U.S. Dvorak? Would I need to keep a thumb drive with me?

You would probably need to do something like that yes. Personally I don’t bother to change layout when I’m using another computer since I can type QWERTY quite well, and it’s good to train from time to time.

As for training programs, I used KTouch (shown in the blog post) and the Dvorak ABCD lesson. When you get more proficient I recommend the game Typing of the Dead, it’s very fun but quite stressful if you’re still struggling with finding the keys! If you like typing games you can also try Z-Type, an online game.

http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/ will develop a customized keyboard just for you. It doesn’t take digraphs, the windows command keys, or the balance of hands into account, but it is pretty neat!