Dvorak resources

Languages: en nl nds (home)

2021-06-16

Since about 2011 I’ve started using dvorak as my main keyboard layout and like the efficiency compared to QWERTY.

Table of contents

Notes

Note to self (2015-10-30)

Note to self: x-keyboard-config on arch linux overwrites the file where the dvorak russian keymap is stored and by that the xserver fails to set the keymap, returning to default qwerty. This can be solved by loading the keymap from a custom location? Or maybe to pin the file so that the package manager doesn’t overwrite it?

Dosbox

Dvorak is also usable in dosbox via a custom mapper file that your can find here You can enable the layout by saving this in your settings directory and mapperfile=dvorak-0.74.map to your sdl section of your dosbox config.

Update (2020-06-11)

Dvorak is now built in as a keymap in dosbox. You can enable the layout by running KEYB dv103 in a dosbox prompt or setting the following in your dosbox config file.

[dos]
keyboardlayout=dv103

Dvorak in dos

To use dvorak in dos download this file containing dvorak.com Transfer it to your C:\DOS folder for example and add this to your AUTOEXEC.bat:

C:\DOS\DVORAK.COM

When your computer boots the program will say DVORAK is loaded and you’re good to go

The MS-DOS supplemental disk also contains a dvorak keyboard layout. Install and put this in your AUTOEXEC.bat:

KEYB DV,,C:\DOS\DVORAK.SYS

Russian (2014-10-07

When learning russian I had to type some stuff in russian, as I found out that there was a phonetic keyboard I was excited but it didn’t work on dvorak layout. So some guy named Oleg made a phonetic russian keyboard layout in dvorak and you can download it here. When you want to use it you have to append the information from the file to /usr/share/X11//xkb/symbols/ru When you want to load it you can type

setxkbmap -layout ru -variant phonetic_dvorak</pre>

Update (2015-04-16)

Since having to setup the keyboard after login can be useful if you don’t have the rights to edit system configuration files on your system(eg. work) but it’s not a durable solution for your own system. If you want to make these things semipermanent you can use the handy program called localectl which writes an xorg.conf.d/ file. In my specific case these are the commands to set the keymap for the console and for within X. For the console I only use normal dvorak whereas in X I want to be able to switch(with menu key) and use the right alt as compose key.

# localectl set-x11-keymap --no-convert dvorak,ru pc104 ,phonetic_dvorak compose:ralt,grp:menu_toggle
# localectl set-keymap --no-convert dvorak