Foreign Dvorak

Although Dvorak was optimized purely for the english language, most other european languages will surely benefit from the design as well (they are all quite alike).
A problem with several foreign languages is the fact that they use special characters such as accented vowels or the ringel-s. Also, while words are usually very similar to english (for example, vowels and consonants following each other, and the frequency of most (un)common letters being much like english), they often have language-specific characteristics. For example, in spanish the h is very rare, in dutch the combination je occurs frequently, and in french eau is more common. This is why it's useful to adapt the standard dvorak layout sligtly, to optimize it for a specific language.

On this page:

• Special characters misplacement rant!
  
  
• Spanish
• German
• Dutch
• Norwegian
• Swedish

Not on this page:

• Aaron's proposed Dvoraklike Hebrew keyboard layout, since it's not based on Dvorak's layout, but only his ideas.

Caveat:
I don't endorse any of the layouts on this page. These modified layouts are nothing but experiments created by amateurs afaik, not based on as extensive research as the genuine dvorak. While no doubt still better than qwerty, they aren't standard (yet). Use with care.
Also note I myself am no real expert on this subject. Anything I say is just speculation, and may be way off. OTOH, it may contain some useful information. Just be warned ;)

SPANISH

A layout developed by Rolando Montaño Fraire. The project can be downloaded from Brooks' site, as zip or stuffit. However it doesn't have native drivers for any OS yet; just a layout for the Tavultesoft Keyboard Manager for Windows.

  ~  !  @  #  $  %  ^  &  *  (  )  {  }  ____ 
  `  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  0  [  ]   BS

 ___  :  ;  W  P  Y  F  G  C  H  L  ¿  _  ¡
 Tab  .  ,  w  p  y  f  g  c  h  l  ?  -  !

 ____  A< O> E| U/ I\ D  R  T  N  S  Ñ  _____
 Caps  a  o  e  u  i  d  r  t  n  s  ñ  Enter

 _____  "  Q  J  K  X  B  M  ¨  V  Z  _______
 Shift  '  q  j  k  x  b  m  ´  v  z   Shift
 ____   ____  _________________  _____   ____
 Ctrl   Alt       Space Bar      AltGr   Ctrl

dvorak

 18.9%
 19.5%

 72.7%
 71.0%

  8.4%
  9.6%

  us
dvorak

 24.2%
 24.3%

 67.4%
 65.9%

  8.4%
  9.6%

qwerty

 48.3%
 46.1%

 31.8%
 33.7%

 19.9%
 20.2%

Indicated is the average number of letters on a specific row. The first value is calculated using Rolando's data, the second one uses my own. Either way, dvorak is the clear winner, in particular the modified spanish version, which keeps over 70% of your keypresses on the home row, and under 10% on the bottom row. 61.2%/60.1% of the keypresses are at the eight home positions, compared to 29.9%/30.4% on qwerty. The following table shows finger usage. Both dvoraks are better balanced than the qwerty layout. The spanish variant does put more stress on your right index finger though..:

Used data: the average letter occurrences in Spanish texts:

By Rolando (385078) e 12.3 t 4.9 g 1.2 j 0.3 a 10.3 l 4.8 f 1.0 x 0.3 o 9.4 d 4.2 . 0.9 z 0.2 s 7.5 u 3.8 b 0.9 ; 0.1 i 7.5 p 3.1 v 0.8 - 0.1 n 7.4 m 2.8 y 0.8 w 0.1 r 5.9 * 1.8 q 0.7 k 0.0 c 4.9 , 1.5 h 0.5

By Shiar (37807) e 12.4 t 4.8 . 1.2 h 0.6 ñ 0.2 a 11.4 d 4.6 g 1.0 í 0.5 ú 0.1 o 8.1 c 4.1 v 1.0 j 0.5 k 0.0 s 6.6 u 3.9 - 1.0 z 0.4 w 0.0 r 6.5 m 3.0 q 0.9 á 0.4   n 6.3 p 2.6 y 0.8 é 0.3 i 6.1 b 1.4 f 0.8 x 0.2 l 5.8 , 1.3 ó 0.7 ; 0.2

The table on the left was the data included with Rolando Montaûo's dvorak project (* = accented characters). The other test was done by me. These were just a few random webpages (extremely random even, since I've got no clue what they were about.) My test confirms Rolando's with most letters. One thing that puzzles me is the Ñ, which scores very low, but cannot be confirmed on his test since it isn't included there. Does this key deserve to be on the home row? I do not know.

GERMAN

This is a German Dvorak layout developed by Stephen Turner. (And I'll say again: I do not endorse the usage of these alternate layouts!)

  °  !£ "² §³ $  %| &¦ /{ ([ )] =} *~ `  ____ 
  ^  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  0  +  ´   BS

 ___  Ü  ;¨ :˜ P  Y  F  G  C  R  L  '  >  _¬
 Tab  ü  ,  .  p  y  f  g  c  r  l  #  <  -

 ____  A  O  E€ U  I  D  H  T  N  Sß ß  _____
 Caps  a  o  e  u  i  d  h  t  n  s  ?  Enter

 __  Ä\ Ö  Q@ J  K  X  B  Mµ W  V  Z  _______
 Sh  ä  ö  q  j  k  x  b  m  w  v  z   Shift
 ____   ____  _________________  _____   ____
 Ctrl   Alt       Space Bar      AltGr   Ctrl

  °  !£ "² §³ $  %| &¦ /{ ([ )] =} *~ `  ____ 
  ^  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  0  +  ´   BS

 ___  Ü  ;¨ :˜ '  Y  F  G  C  T  Z  P  \ß _¬
 Tab  ü  ,  .  #  y  f  g  c  t  z  p  ?  -

 ____  A  O  E€ I  U  H  D  R  N  Sß L  _____
 Caps  a  o  e  i  u  h  d  r  n  s  l  Enter

 __  Ä  Ö  Q@ J  K  X  B  Mµ W  V  >  _______
 Sh  ä  ö  q  j  k  x  b  m  w  v  <   Shift
 ____   ____  _________________  _____   ____
 Ctrl   Alt       Space Bar      AltGr   Ctrl

As you can see the alt-gr key is used frequently. This is quite necessary since germans simply need more characters. However also a lot of characters were moved unecessarily. This is all inherited from the german qwerty layout (more details in the next section). Because I'm no german I'll refrain from commenting too much on a layout and language I do not use myself. These characters have also been moved in a similar way in dutch layouts though, which I can and will discuss below.

Here's a key location study like on the . It compares these two german versions to the standard german qwerty and an alphabetic layout (which is just qwerty with the qwerty keys placed alphabetically, since it doesn't actually exists afaik). In all tests sz has been used instead of ß.
I also did a test using standard us dvorak, qwerty and abcd, by simply removing umlauts. Afaik most germans always use accented characters when their keyboard has those, but it may still be useful as a us keyboard comparison.
I used a german dictionary (wgerman 2-7.1) to get the following results:

SPECIAL CHARACTERS

First for those who are unfamiliar with non-us qwerty layouts: they aren't what they seem to be ;) Of course accented and language-specific characters have been added to the standard qwerty for every language, but that's not all. Often special characters (^&/=*|-...) seem to have been unnecessarily moved around. For example, in nearly every european country the parenthesises and ampersand have been moved one key to the left. Why?? I honestly don't know, but I'm pretty sure it was just thought of by somebody. But it's not just the us+uk being different from the rest; in fact every language has subtle (or less subtle) alterations. For comparison, I took the upper row of several layouts and put them in a table:

As you can see, some are more equal than others, but this goes far beyond adding language-specific characters. Do Danish people really need a ½ sign so much more than the rest of the world, and do dutch people use @ and / so much? And what's with the section sign (§)? I may be mistaken about some things - <stress>I'm no expert!</stress> - but I do think this is rediculous.

So we've not only got the qwerty tradition, it seems we've got multiple qwerties, some even worse than others. With dvorak we may have a chance to standardize some countries (which is good).

To those developing country-specific dvorak layouts: try not to deviate unnecessarily from the current standard (not the ANSI standard, but the commonly used dvorak).

DUTCH

Take a look at the standard dutch keyboard layout:

  §¬ !¹ "² #³ $¼ %½ &¾ _£ ({ )} '  ?\ ˜¸  ____ 
  @  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  0  /  °    BS

 ___  Q  W  E  R¶ T  Y  U  I  O  P  ^  |  >
 Tab  q  w  e  r  t  y  u  i  o  p  ¨  *  <

 ____  A  Sß D  F  G  H  J  K  L  ±  `  _____
 Caps  a  s  d  f  g  h  j  k  l  +  ´  Enter

 __  [¦ Z« X» C¢ V  B  N  Mµ ;  :  =  _______
 Sh  ]  z  x  c  v  b  n  m  ,  .  -   Shift
 ____   ____  _________________  _____   ____
 Ctrl   Alt       Space Bar      AltGr   Ctrl

Terrible isn't it? I mean, + and ± next to the L?? (Probably aging back to the old typewriters and simply ported to computer keyboards.) Considering dutch people use the same kind of special characters as english people (except for a few accented vowels) it's a mystery why the keyboard was designed this way. The only thing they had to add was accent keys, which in my opinion would've been done best by placing them as an alt-gr combination.

Luckily, it seems this layout has failed. Nowadays most people in the Netherlands aren't even aware there is in fact this dutch keyboard. They usually use the us-international qwerty layout (which enables alt-gr combinations, but unfortunately also misuses the ', ", ^, ` and ~ keys: really sucky imo, especially when programming.)

This is the same test as on the main dvorak page, but this time using a dutch dictionary (wdutch 1:0.1e-7), in which accents have been removed (ie: ë → e).

Now about a dutch dvorak: I'm unaware of any efforts like that. I'm also unsure whether it's actually needed. That's why I examined the letter occurrency of some random dutch texts (data on the right, comprehensible tables below.)

Compared to typing english, both layouts seem to be less effective. More of the keypresses occur on the top and bottom rows, and also finger usage is less balanced. These problems aren't too much cause for concern though, especially since qwerty isn't any better either.

Something remarkable is the fact that the common dutch vowel combinations (au, oe, ou, eu, ei, and ui) are all perfectly aligned! They're all typed pinky-to-index, which improves speed and comfort greatly. Also common consonant combinations ((s)ch and ng) have this feature. This is a major advantage for typing dutch.

Remains only the problem of accented keys. By default Windows doesn't have an international layout for dvorak like it has for qwerty, so we have to resort to the good old alt+nnn. (or does somebody know of a way to enable alt-gr characters?) Unix systems should be easily modified to enable alt-gr (you might even want to move it to a more accessible location such as the caps lock key, or control as in Tetron's Dvorak Keyboard Layout.) I don't know anything about the Mac.

Like I said: I do not think a dutch variant of dvorak is really needed. The us-dvorak is quite optimized for typing dutch language, and special characters are rare enough to simply use key-combinations. Still, for the fun of it, I did some research on a layout even better optimized for dutch texts. This should only be used (if at all) by those who seriously want to write a lot of dutch (and I can't guarantee anything of course).

Because in dutch the sequence "je" is common, it would be better to have those two keys under different fingers (preferably index-to-pinky). Also the e is used even more than in english (as is the j), so this would be better combined with a more uncommonly used key at the same finger. Switching the q and j helps both cases, while qu can still be typed index-to-pinky as well. A second deviation may be swapping c and r, to further balance finger usage. This way you'll also be using the stronger second finger for the more common r, while maintaining easy typing of (s)ch.

NORWEGIAN

A Norwegian variation was designed by Stenling. More info and drivers for Windows|Mac|Linux on his page.

  §  !  "@ #£ ¤$ %  &  /{ ([ )] =} ?  `´ ____ 
  |  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  0  +  \   BS

 ___  Å  ;  :  P  Y  F  G  C  R  L  *  ^~ >
 Tab  å  ,  .  p  y  f  g  c  r  l  '  ¨  <

 ____  A  O  E  U  I  D  H  T  N  S  _  _____
 Caps  a  o  e  u  i  d  h  t  n  s  -  Enter

 __  Ø  Æ  Q  J  K  X  B  M  W  V  Z  _______
 Sh  ø  æ  q  j  k  x  b  m  w  v  z   Shift
 ____   ____  _________________  _____   ____
 Ctrl   Alt       Space Bar      AltGr   Ctrl

SWEDISH

A Swedish layout was made by Liket (Leif Claesson) and Xtreamist. Further details and drivers for Windows 9x/NT/2k, Linux and BeOS on his (old) page.

  ½  !  "@ #£ ¤$ %  &  /{ ([ )] =} ?\ `  ____ 
  §  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  0  +  ´   BS

 ___  Å  Ä  Ö  P  Y  F  G  C  R  L  ;  ^~ *
 Tab  å  ä  ö  p  y  f  g  c  r  l  ,  ¨  '

 ____  A  O  E  U  I  D  H  T  N  S  _  _____
 Caps  a  o  e  u  i  d  h  t  n  s  -  Enter

 __  >| :  Q  J  K  X  B  M  W  V  Z  _______
 Sh  <  .  q  j  k  x  b  m  w  v  z   Shift
 ____   ____  _________________  _____   ____
 Ctrl   Alt       Space Bar      AltGr   Ctrl

ESPERANTO

under construction

An Esperanto variant as found at Esperanto-Asocio de Skotlando.

  Ĥ~ !  @  #  $  %  ^  &  *  (  )  {  }  ____ 
  ĥ` 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  0  [  ]   BS

 ___  "  <  >  P  ĜY F  G  C  R  L  ?  +  |
 Tab  '  ,  .  p  ĝy f  g  c  r  l  /  =  \

 ____  A< O> E| U/ I\ D  H  T  N  S  Ŭ_ _____
 Caps  a  o  e  u  i  d  h  t  n  s  ŭ- Enter

 _____  :  ĈQ J  K  ŜX B  M  ĴW V  Z  _______
 Shift  ;  ĉq j  k  ŝx b  m  ĵw v  z   Shift
 ____   ____  _________________  _____   ____
 Ctrl   Alt       Space Bar      AltGr   Ctrl

Another variant over at DSK - the Dvorak Standard Keyboard.