NationStates Jolt Archive

Does anyone know where one can change keymaps on windows xp?

I let one of my exes set my keyboard so it could toggle between dvorak and qwerty and I did find where I could fix it once (he'd messed it up so that dvorak was the default and I fixed it so qwerty was), but last night I was somewhat inebriated and went on my computer and apparently hit those magical buttons to switch the keymap to dvorak by accident and I can't for the life of me remember what the correct combination of buttons is, nor can I find the place to fix it. I had to restart firefox (which is the program that I had been using when I accidently did this) this morning to get the qwerty keymap back.

You should be able to switch back to qwerty through the language toolbar I think.

Just right click on the 'EN' by the system tray and click settings. Should be in their somewhere.

At least that's how we're told to switch between keyboard layouts at university. Damn Russian studies students always leaving the keyboard as cyrilic.

edit: a little mucking about tells me you can switch keyboard layout by pressing left alt + shift. You can also left click the lanaguage bar and choose there as well.

I don't see an EN in the system tray...

Try left alt+shift.

You should just learn Dvorak ¬_¬

Well, you should. But if you want to continue being a sad, lonely QWERTY user, the language option button looks like a little keyboard icon, just to the left of the system tray. Possibly slightly obscured by it, it is on my machine.

To be rid of Dvorak permanently (;_;) go Control Panel-> Regional and Language Options-> Languages. Click "Details" and you'll get a "Text Services and Input Languages" dialogue box which has a couple of pretty self-explanatory controls.

Didn't they switch out DVORAK because QWERTY was a better, more efficient style.

No.

IMHO, you should copy and paste this: setxkbmap -model pc105 -layout us -variant intl

So it was just to be obstinate.

IMHO, you should copy and paste this: setxkbmap -model pc105 -layout us -variant intl

"Bad command or file name."
I blame the lack of an X server on most Windows XP machines.

You should just learn Dvorak ¬_¬

Well, you should. But if you want to continue being a sad, lonely QWERTY user, the language option button looks like a little keyboard icon, just to the left of the system tray. Possibly slightly obscured by it, it is on my machine.

To be rid of Dvorak permanently (;_;) go Control Panel-> Regional and Language Options-> Languages. Click "Details" and you'll get a "Text Services and Input Languages" dialogue box which has a couple of pretty self-explanatory controls.
Oh, thank you, that was what I needed!

I'm not getting rid of the dvorak entirely, I would like to learn to use it eventually, but I'm really lazy and when I'm drunk at 3 am I'm really not patient enough to try (nor did I get around to it during the school year when I had deadlines and the like). However, I did find out what keys I had to hit to flip back and forth. (it was left alt + shift [as infinite dunes suggested])

Didn't they switch out DVORAK because QWERTY was a better, more efficient style.
No, qwerty actually developed to make people type slower. Back when they had type writers this was practical because if you type too quickly then you end up with the arms hitting each other and the like, but it is obsolete now and dvorak is technically better. It's just that it's very disorienting when your keyboard switches to another key map on you without any warning. I may actually try to learn it now that I've been reminded of the fact that my keyboard can do this... but I'll label all my keys and junk first as I'm lazy. :P

Didn't they switch out DVORAK because QWERTY was a better, more efficient style.

Other way around - dvorak is superior;) But qwerty is what everyone learned, so it never caught on.
And nowadays even dvorak is obsolete. But we still use the ancient qwerty...

No, qwerty actually developed to make people type slower. Back when they had type writers this was practical because if you type too quickly then you end up with the arms hitting each other and the like, but it is obsolete now and dvorak is technically better. It's just that it's very disorienting when your keyboard switches to another key map on you without any warning. I may actually try to learn it now that I've been reminded of the fact that my keyboard can do this... but I'll label all my keys and junk first as I'm lazy. :P
At least yours remained English. I did some obscure Firefox shortcut a few weeks ago and started typing in Aramaic. Fun stuff that was, I couldn't even Google it.

Other way around - dvorak is superior;) But qwerty is what everyone learned, so it never caught on.
And nowadays even dvorak is obsolete. But we still use the ancient qwerty...
What is the best keymap?

What is the best keymap?
I was curious and read up on this a while ago...

A syllabic chord keyboard such as Velotype or Stenotype can be twice as fast as qwerty or dvorak. Each key is a syllable and you type one word by pressing all it's syllables at once. So after you learn the key-combos for all the words you type one word per key-combo. It's only used when you need to type as fast as people speak, which normal keyboards are chanceless at. For example subtitling live TV or writing down protocols in courts. But in courts they type stenography instead of normal text to increase speed a little bit extra.

Dvorak is probably the fastest "normal" keyboard layout for typing in English. Each language has a different optimal keyboard layout depending on the letter patterns of that language. I didn't bother switching since neither is optimal for Swedish and the the difference isn't that big anyway. But it does feel slightly stupid to use a qwerty keyboard that is designed to put keys that are used together far apart so their arms in typewriters don't collide, meaning fingers have to travel further.

The biggest difference is between looking at the keys or not and how many fingers your use. A person that never looks at the keys types several times faster then a person that does look at them. People who both look and use only 2 fingers are painfully slow to wait for while they are typing something. Touch typing owns. :D

Nice summary, Ruby City. And well done on the reason for QWERTY; it wasn't actually to "slow people down", as is often said, but to prevent the letter-typing-arm things colliding, as you did.

In my opinion the best argument for Dvorak is that your fingers rest on the most common keys, so you have to move them less. It just feels easier and more comfortable, and (allegedly) there's a lower risk of RSI. Also, I'm lazy.
And when a "normal" person tries to type anything they get horribly confused, especially if they can't touch-type, which is brilliant fun. No, I don't get out much.