XKB half-dvorak

An annotated half-dvorak keyboard layout for the X Keyboard Extension.

About half-dvorak

As far as I know, there is currently no dvorak counterpart to any half-qwerty layout. Chances are you ended up here because you were in fact looking for one! This repo contains the dvorak counterpart of jorissteyn's half-qwerty layout. Compared to that original project, I'm also providing a safe, automated installation process. After installing, three new layouts will be available to xkb:

English (US, half-dvorak)
English (US, half-dvorak using caps modifier)
English (US, half-dvorak assuming space modifier)

Of these, however, only the second layout works out-of-the-box, whereas the other two need further steps for configuration. For the purpose, the layout's source code (halfqwerty.xkb) is super informative, and it explains different ways of putting itself to use.

About half-qwerty

Half-qwerty is a touch typing technique for one-handed touch typing on a qwerty keyboard. It has a very gradual learning curve because it leverages the symmetry of the human hands: right hand finger movements are mirrored on the left hand and vice versa.

Some older phones have a keyboard marketed as half-qwerty where two characters, for example Q and W, share the same key. That's obviously not what we're talking about here.

The technique is decades old and several hard- and software solutions exists today. Edgar Matias pioneered the concept and his research paper on half-qwerty is an excellent source for further reading on the matter.

Software solutions for Linux

Linux desktop systems use the highly configurable X Keyboard Extension, or XKB, which can be used to create half-dvorak and half-qwerty layouts. A well-known half-qwerty configuration for XKB is mirrorboard created by XKCD's Randall Munroe. The configuration in jorissteyn's repository has some advantages over mirrorboard:

the configuration is abundantly annotated
it contains a base layout that isn't biased towards a specific "flip" modifier and can be cleanly extended
it contains a "caps" variant that turns caps-lock into a "flip" modifier intended for occasional one-hand typing, similar to mirrorboard
it contains a "space" variant that optimizes tab and caps-lock for using the space bar as flip modifier
works well when plugging in and out keyboards of different models
can be made available to the keyboard settings of your desktop environment
tries to be just as friendly to the right hand as it is to the left hand
tries to mirror as much keys as spatially possible

A noteworthy alternative to handling this in XKB is XHK: Xlib HalfKeyboard. It does the job very well and uses the space bar as a flip switch but it operates on a lower level which makes it less configurable by design.

Other software solutions for Linux exist but all seem incomplete, outdated or simply a bad idea.

Installation

git clone https://github.com/FireSterLine/dvorak-qwerty.git
cd dvorak-qwerty
sudo ./install.sh

This will save your xkb configuration (default path: /usr/share/X11/xkb) in an archive named xkb-backup-*.tar.gz, and will apply a patch containing the new configuration files. The half-dvorak layouts will then be available, and you can select them via setxkbmap (or your Desktop Evironment settings).

Feedback

Found a bug? Have a better idea? Unless it's about the installation (which is my real humble addition) Joris, the original creator, would love to hear about it!