The Workman Keyboard Layout
An interesting read whenever the topic of keyboard layouts comes up: <a href="http://reason.com/archives/1996/06/01/typing-errors" rel="nofollow">http://reason.com/archives/1996/06/01/typing-errors</a><p>Summary of that article:
The 'QWERTY was developed to slow down the typist' story is a lie. There is no serious evidence that Dvorak is a 'better' layout. If you were starting from scratch, there would probably be no advantage choosing one over the other, except that QWERTY is the standard. Retraining is a waste of time.<p>One of the key quotes:<p>> The study design directly paralleled the decision that a real firm or a real government agency might face: Is it worthwhile to retrain its present typists? If Strong's study is correct, it is not efficient for current typists to switch to Dvorak. The study also implied that the eventual typing speed would be greater with QWERTY than with Dvorak, although this conclusion was not emphasized.<p>I have no reason to believe that the Workman layout offers any other advantages.