Editor’s Note: The following article expands upon Gordon Young’s program published in issues 5, 6, 7, and 9 of TS Horizons.
Recently there has been a good deal of interest in the DVORAK keyboard arrangement The DVORAK keyboard requires less finger movement to type a series of letters as compared to the ordinary QWERTY arrangement, It is estimated that 70 percent of typing is on the home row of a DVORAK keyboard. Only 30 percent of typing is on the home row of a QWERTY keyboard. Apple IIC microcomputers come with removable keys and software to allow users to use the keyboard as a QWERTY or DVORAK keyboard,
Users of WORM who have installed a regular keyboard may want to try the DVORAK keyboard arrangement. The following figure shows the layout for a Timex/Sinclair 1000 DVORAK Keyboard. The positions of two letters, V and S were moved to accommodate the smaller number of keys on a Timex/Sinclair keyboard as compared to a standard keyboard. Punctuation marks (other than :, ;, ., and ,) are left in the positions that they occupied on the original Timex/Sinclair keyboard.
The WORM word processor can be modified to accept input from the keyboard in DVORAK fashion. A user may want to tape the DVORAK letters over the appropriate keys to facilitate using the new keyboard arrangement.