View Single Post
  #124   Report Post  
Posted to uk.d-i-y
The Natural Philosopher[_2_] The Natural Philosopher[_2_] is offline
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 39,563
Default OT: more PC insanity

On 12/04/2021 23:05, Tim Streater wrote:
On 12 Apr 2021 at 23:03:37 BST, Fredxx wrote:

On 12/04/2021 22:19, Rod Speed wrote:


"Fredxx" wrote in message
...
On 12/04/2021 18:31, T i m wrote:
On Mon, 12 Apr 2021 07:12:18 -0700 (PDT), whisky-dave
wrote:

snip

But then I guess that the focus (on technical content) may distract
from 'checking' for spelling (if they don't pop out at you). A classic
one seen here is 'teh' instead of 'the'?

I wonder if that is down to the brain being faster than being able
to type.

Possibly?

Don;t forget that the keyboard is designed to slow typing down.

The 'qwerty' keyboard you mean ... I thought it was more to balance
the speed out (and so make it faster)?

A disputed reason is so the hammers were less likely to interfere and
clash for high speed typing.

It isnt disputed by anyone with even half a clue.


There are a number of links to the history of the Query keyboard than
debunk the idea.

Just one of these with a greater 'clue':

https://www.newscientist.com/article...erty-keyboard/

Quote:
One often-repeated explanation is that it was designed to €śslow the
typist down€ť in order to stop the mechanism from jamming, a bug that
dogged earlier designs. This was supposedly achieved by keeping common
letter pairs apart.

But that cannot be true. E and R, the second most common letter pair in
English, are next to one another. T and H, the most common of all, are
near neighbours. A statistical analysis in 1949 found that a QWERTY
keyboard actually has more close pairs than a keyboard arranged at random.

Another urban myth is that it enabled salesmen to impress customers by
rapidly typing €śTYPE WRITER QUOTE€ť from the top row. Its a nice idea €“
and it does seem unlikely that these letters would appear together by
chance €“ but there is no historical evidence for it.

Perhaps a more convincing though prosaic reason is that the keyboard is
simply a semi-random rearrangement of the original piano-style keyboard.

Well probably never know. A century after Sholes finalised the
keyboard, historian Jan Noyes of Loughborough University published a
lengthy analysis concluding: €śThere appears €¦ to be no obvious reason
for the placement of letters in the QWERTY layout.


And, equally, there is no reason to change it.

I think that the typewriter layout *was* dictated by the mechanical
design, but that's lost in the mists of time.

What emerged was something that ArtStudents„˘ who argue endlessly about
which standards are best, fail to understand completely in their
complete lack of exposure to RealLife„˘. Namely that it doesn't matter
*what* the standard *is*, so long as everybody *knows* what it is, and
*uses* it.


--
WOKE is an acronym... Without Originality, Knowledge or Education.