Quote:
Originally Posted by Cooney
as ours is based entirely on frequency of letter usage in American English,
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That actually is funny thing. You would think that they are set so it's fastest to type, would you not ? But infact they aren't.
Your logic is right, tho. They are set based on frequency of usage. But the layout was designed before computers, for mechanical typing machines. And typing machines had one serious problem. When you hit two letters that was located next to each other, you could jam it. So, the letters was spread out so the most frequently used keys are atleast 1 letter apart from each other. That solved the problem with jamming type machines but made new problem, horribly illogical keyboard and that wasn't the fastest possible to use. Altho, it's pretty easy to learn and archive quite good speed with regular QWERTY board.
But there is more efficient layouts for English. And since computers don't have the jamming problem, they can be easily used. The most well known is Dvorak layout. It is without a doubt the best layout for English text. It can increase your typing speed tens of percents.
Similar layout exists also for French and many other languages.