Writing German text using the Dvorak keyboard
1) Motivation
It has been demonstrated that the Dvorak
keyboard layout increases writing performance for English language
typing. Since the Dvorak keyboard has been designed to match the
needs of the English language, its usefulness for German texts remains
to be evaluated.
2) German language typing
The main differences between English and German
which affect the keyboards performance are the letter frequencies and
a set of special characters called umlaute, i.e. Ä Ö Ü
ä ö ü and ß.
2.1) German Keyboards
Most desktop computers in Germany ship with special German keyboards
which have extra keys for the German umlaute. To make space for these
keys the return key is shortened and some of the mathematical symbols
have to be reached in a combination with the right Alt-key. Although
for normal word processing these keys are not used very often it is
quite annoying if you are programing or doing some other kind of
mathematical information processing.
2.2) Other input methods
The most common input method for English keyboard layouts is to add
the two dots on top of the letter by typing a double quote " followed
by the letter. I.e. Ä is typed as "A whereas "A is typed as "
space A. On German keyboards the same feature is implemented for the
french accents ' and `. Since you need to press the shift key for the
double quote you have to press a total of three keys for one umlaut.
My favorite way of typing German umlaute is offered one my system as
"German-postfix". It exploits the common practice to write umlaute in
a combination with e, i.e. ä as ae, and ß as sz where
German fonts are not availible. . In one of the very rare occasions
where ae has not to be replaced by ä typing an other e changes
äe back to ae. except for the z all of these keys are on the home
row on Dvorak keyboards. Therefore this is assumed to the most
efficient and at the same time intuitive input method.
3) Reviewed Material
In order to test the keyboards performance three texts from the
German newspaper "Süddeutsche Zeitung" have been reviewed. Text 1 and
text 2 from the political section and text 3 from the technical
section with an over average amount of English terminology. Text 4 as
a reference is an English text from the CNN sports section.
The input method for the Dvorak keyboard was chosen as German-postfix
discussed in the previous section. Since umlaute are rather rare,
results are assumed to be not significantly different for other input
methods.
4) Results
4.1) Finger balance
For the workload to be optimally spread over eight fingers each finger
should press 12.5 percent of all keys. The following test measures the
work load for each finger and the standard deviation for these eight values.
German Keyboard
| Finger |
AQY
"! |
WSX |
EDC |
FRV
TGB |
ZHN
UJM |
IK, |
OL. |
PÄÖÜ
ß-'? |
standard
deviation |
| Text 1 |
5.9% |
7.3% |
23.7% |
22.4% |
19.7% |
9.4% |
7.0% |
4.5% |
7.5% |
| Text 2 |
6.5% |
7.7% |
22.3% |
21.0% |
20.3% |
11.2% |
7.3% |
3.4% |
7.0% |
| Text 3 |
5.3% |
9.3% |
24.1% |
21.5% |
19.2% |
9.3% |
8.5% |
2.8% |
7.4% |
| Text 4 |
9.1% |
7.6% |
19.0% |
22.0% |
17.3% |
8.9% |
13.3% |
2.8% |
6.1% |
Dvorak Keyborad
| Finger |
A!'" |
OQ, |
EJ. |
PUK
XIY |
FGD
HBM |
CTW |
RNV |
LSZ?- |
standard
deviation |
| Text 1 |
6.1% |
4.4% |
18.5% |
14.6% |
17.5% |
10.3% |
17.4% |
11.3% |
5.0% |
| Text 2 |
6.8% |
4.8% |
18.2% |
14.5% |
16.6% |
9.6% |
17.5% |
12.0% |
4.7% |
| Text 3 |
5.0% |
5.6% |
17.5% |
13.2% |
17.6% |
11.3% |
17.5% |
12.2% |
4.8% |
| Text 4 |
8.0% |
8.8% |
13.7% |
15.3% |
13.6% |
13.7% |
13.1% |
10.7% |
2.8% |
Result
For all four texts the Dvorak keyboard layout is considerable more
balanced than the German QWERTZ layout. The workload on QWERTZ ranges
from 2.8% to 24.1%, whereas Dvorak only ranges from 4.4 to 18.5%. The
results for the German texts (text 1-3) however are still significatly
worse than for the English language text (text 4).
4.2) total effort
This performace measure tries to estimate the total effort spent to
type a specific text. This effort is calculated from an estimated
distance the finger has to travel from its home position. Keys on the
home positions count 1, keys between the pointing finges (i.e. I and D
on Dvorak) count 1.5, keys on the upper and lower row count 2 and the
top row, which contains ?,ß and " on German keyboards, count 2.5.
Finally the ratio between the Dvorak and the German effort is computed.
German Keyboard
| Row |
top |
upper |
home |
bottom |
total effort |
| Text 1 |
19 |
1807 |
1136 |
730 |
6,383 |
| Text 2 |
29 |
2500 |
1569 |
1014 |
8836 |
| Text 3 |
9 |
1373 |
836 |
641 |
4970 |
| Text 4 |
2 |
2119 |
1191 |
863 |
7259 |
Dvorak Keyborad
| Row |
top |
upper |
home |
bottom |
total effort |
ratio |
| Text 1 |
0 |
865 |
2,596 |
308 |
5,165 |
80% |
| Text 2 |
0 |
1,136 |
3,582 |
491 |
7,157 |
80% |
| Text 3 |
0 |
649 |
1,933 |
302 |
4,002 |
80% |
| Text 4 |
0 |
1,005 |
2,846 |
324 |
5,700 |
79% |
Results
According to this rough estimate one saves about 20% of "effort" when
using Dvorak keyboards without significant difference between English
and German texts. It is also important to note that the need to reach
the top row disappeared completely.
5)Conclusion
These experiments strongly suggest that the Dvorak keyboard layout
outperformes the German layout without wasting three keys for
rather rare German umlaute. Therefore the Dvorak keyboard increases
typing speed for German and English language texts as well as for
programming languages.
Stefan Dirnstorfer
dirnstor@in.tum.de
A) Appendix
A.1) Raw Data
| text1 | text2 | text3 | text4 |
| A | 199 | 320 | 135 | 315 |
| B | 75 | 94 | 65 | 70 |
| C | 99 | 131 | 98 | 149 |
| D | 181 | 209 | 140 | 120 |
| E | 595 | 798 | 452 | 523 |
| F | 77 | 75 | 57 | 78 |
| G | 124 | 122 | 70 | 74 |
| H | 128 | 212 | 98 | 124 |
| I | 265 | 434 | 202 | 316 |
| J | 5 | 17 | 4 | 6 |
| K | 36 | 61 | 30 | 26 |
| L | 125 | 171 | 88 | 180 |
| M | 73 | 151 | 79 | 101 |
| N | 353 | 443 | 261 | 344 |
| O | 108 | 152 | 124 | 334 |
| P | 76 | 58 | 38 | 88 |
| Q | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
| R | 271 | 432 | 216 | 283 |
| S | 229 | 342 | 204 | 251 |
| T | 250 | 318 | 177 | 367 |
| U | 128 | 158 | 79 | 141 |
| V | 30 | 36 | 29 | 47 |
| W | 38 | 53 | 50 | 59 |
| X | 2 | 1 | 11 | 7 |
| Y | 7 | 5 | 14 | 61 |
| Z | 40 | 58 | 27 | 5 |
| Ä | 21 | 22 | 8 | 0 |
| Ö | 11 | 18 | 2 | 0 |
| Ü | 36 | 38 | 8 | 0 |
| ß | 9 | 19 | 7 | 0 |
| , | 47 | 79 | 35 | 31 |
| . | 29 | 53 | 31 | 42 |
| " | 10 | 10 | 2 | 2 |
| ! | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |