Keyboard Layout: Dvorak vs Colemak: is it Worthwhile to Improvethe Dvorak Layout?

[Lie Ryan]

On 06/18/11 03:53, Xah Lee wrote:
> On Jun 15, 5:43 am, rusi <rustompm... at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Jun 15, 5:32 pm, Dotan Cohen <dotanco... at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks. From testing small movements with my fingers I see that the
>>> fourth finger is in fact a bit weaker than the last finger, but more
>>> importantly, it is much less dexterous. Good to know!
>>
>> Most of the piano technique-icians emphasis, especially those of the
>> last century like Hanon, was to cultivate 'independence' of the
>> fingers.  The main target of these attacks being the 4th finger.
>>
>> The number of potential-pianists who ruined their hands and lives
>> chasing this holy grail is unknown
> 
> Hi rusi, am afaid going to contradict what u say here.
> 
> i pretty much mastered Hanon 60. All of it, but it was now 8 years
> ago. The idea that pinky is stronger than 4th is silly. I can't fathom
> any logic or science to support that. Perhaps what u meant is that in
> many situations the use of pinky can be worked around because it in at
> the edge of your hand so you can apply chopping motion or similar.
> (which, is BAD if you want to develope piano finger skill) However,
> that's entirely different than saying pinky being stronger than 4th.
> 
> there's many ways we can cookup tests right away to see. e.g. try to
> squeeze a rubber ball with 4th and thumb. Repeat with pink + thumb.
> Or, reverse exercise by stretching a rubber band wrapped on the 2
> fingers of interest. You can easy see that pinky isn't stronger.

Except that the actual finger strength themselves are not very relevant;
the dexterity of the fingers turned out to matter more because pressing
the keys in a keyboard does not actually take a lot of power.

Finger strength is even less important in typing than piano since, since
the character produced by power press and light press are the same.