[samatman]

It's actually a critical distinction.

If QWERTY was designed to be the worst possible layout, to make typing slow in order to prevent jams, then now, with n-key rollover, we're all stuck with the worst possible layout.

If instead it was designed to be the most jam-free possible layout, with a secondary goal of being as fast as possible given that criterion, it's probably not that bad, and we'd live in a world where the fastest QWERTY typists aren't that much slower than the fastest typists, period.

And, in fact, we see that, while the world record was at one time held by a Dvorak typist, the prize at present belongs to QWERTY:

https://www.typing.com/blog/fastest-typists/

[stevage]

I wonder if anyone has ever set out to design the worst possible layout, and if so, what it would look like.

[jeffbee]

Could be a fun game. For starters I'd move the most useless keys to the index finger home row positions, perhaps pipe and backtick. Then I'd invert the sense of shift, so you have to hold it to type anything lowercase. I'd take all the most common two-letter sequences and I'd move those letters under the weakest finger. So T H E O A R S and N replace the punctuation keys on the right side. This should make it a real hassle to type "the", especially considering that you'll be holding down shift, which should itself be somewhere hard to reach, such as where 6 usually goes.

[I_complete_me]

Can't figure out whether you are a sadist or a masochist but I love how you ran with _that_ particular ball. Kudos to you.

[benhurmarcel]

http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?worst_layout

[sarbaz]

It's worth pointing out that the worst possible layout for keyboards might actually be one of the best possible layouts for phones.

[taeric]

I am not claiming to support that it is the worst. Just saying that, if it helps you type faster by keeping the device from jamming because you are typing too fast, then it is by definition helping you type faster by limiting the speed that you can type. Hence, slowing you down so that you don't go so fast that you crash.

As per the claim of the fastest typist. I would be shocked it steno doesn't win that, hands down.

Edit: Added in "because you are typing too fast", which was part of the original claim. I should have noted I don't know if I believe it, but I did want to raise that something that makes you go as fast as you can by keeping you from going too fast, both slows you down and makes you type faster. At the same time.

[garaetjjte]

That's some tortuous logic. If it helps type faster by keeping the device from jamming, then... it helps type faster. If it only jammed because you type too fast, you could(/must) just slow down, no fancy layouts necessary. It didn't jam because you pressed any key too fast, it jammed when you pressed adjacent typebar too fast, and with proper layout (making sure that common digrams weren't on adjacent typebars) these situations could be minimized.

Weird thing in these discussions is considering that most jam-free possible layout and as fast as possible was somehow different design goal. But, in world of early mechanical typewriters, it was the same! You couldn't have "fast" layout that jammed because it wouldn't be fast, and if you had jam-free layout it probably was fast, because it weren't forcing you to depress each key completely before pressing next.

[taeric]

But only in the sense that my kid's training wheels help them go faster on a bike. Since that only works up to a certain speed.

So... yeah, it is somewhat convoluted, but not as much as you seem to be implying. Take "kids chopsticks". They speed up kids, obviously. They slow down folks that know what they are going.

(Really, I could probably list a huge list of things that all work in this vein.)

[samatman]

Stenography is specifically excluded, because it's a shorthand: the actual form of the final text is reconstituted from abbreviation.

The system described in the OP text is a form of stenography, conducted with a normal keyboard. I would be surprised if a competition typist, presented with an already-shortened text, couldn't beat out most stenotype stenographers working off the original text.

It would be unfair for a typing competition to exclude a chorded keypad, and I don't know of they do or not. It's completely fair to not accept "ts cmptly fr" as the transcription of "it's completely fair", no matter how it's typed in.

[taeric]

In the context of the article we are reading, this seems somewhat amusing. The entire trick, as presented, turns typing into an adhoc shorthand.

That all said, I confess I don't buy many of the benefits of alternative keyboards. I switched to colemak about a year ago and I think I am still below the speed I was at qwerty. Significantly so.

Of course, I don't know that this has had a major impact on my speed of getting things done. Plenty of other obstacles there.

[samatman]

> In the context of the article we are reading, this seems somewhat amusing. The entire trick, as presented, turns typing into an adhoc shorthand.

Yes, and I in fact said the same thing in the post you're replying to.

Typing competitions have existed for far longer than personal computers, and the value of typing fast was being able to produce a complete typewritten document. Steno machines coexisted, and had their own competitions, so the parameters of these things were set before it became possible to 'reconstitute' stenography into full text on an automatic basis.

All games have rules, and they're always somewhat-to-completely arbitrary. An "open category" would reduce to whomever can talk fastest, since text transcription is a basically solved problem and the sound sample can be slowed until it's in the pocket for the transcribing software to work on it. Steve Woodmore can articulate 637 words per minute: no one is touching that with their fingers.

[taeric]

Agreed, I didn't mean my last post to be a rebuttal of yours. Just more conversation in it. :) (Is why I called it amusing.)

I get that most forum posts are point counterpoint things. That said, it isn't the only way, is it?

I'm curious how true it is that text transcription is solved. Judging from how badly my home speakers with at times, I'm sceptical. This is especially true in most environments with many people talking. Just getting a "stop" in while my kids are in the room is already difficult.

Edit: I see my mistake. I should have said "it is indeed an adhoc shorthand". I did not mean to make it like I was introducing the point.

[samatman]

No worries, yes that would have been much clearer.

'solved' in that, when I say something complex to my phone, it does get it right, although there is a problem of the long tail of proper nouns: I live in Hawaii, and it has real problems with the place names around here, can't pronounce them either. I'd say it's well past 99% and will only improve: it correctly handled the sentence "voice transcription is approximately as robust as stenography", which doesn't make the sentence true but is suggestive.

I guess my point was that it's easy to recognize that voice transcription is 'not typing', and stenography just isn't typing in the same way: there's software between the actual transcript and the final, legible text, which lets it be faster.

Steno would be pretty useless for me as a coder, though I do use snippets, which are kind of the same thing if you squint.