Ergonomic Keyboard Layout for Portuguese: pt-Nativo

Brief History and Appreciation

I embraced this Project by July 2005, due to the pain my tendinitis caused at the time. It was extremely cold, and I had been feeling pain a while ago, but the cold makes it worst. Anyone who suffers from tendinitis knows what I’m talking about. Therefore, I searched the internet for some ergonomic keyboard solution, since having to stop working was not an option.

That’s when I found the fórum do Nando Florestan sobre teclados Dvorak [http://web.archive.org/web/20110706154744/http:/oui.com.br/n/forum_viewforum.php?2] (Nando Florestan’s forum on Dvorak keyboards), which studied and publicized Dvorak’s simplified keyboard, in order to adjust it to our ABNT keyboard. On that forum, people discussed two Dvorak keyboard implementations to the ABNT: the first, which is the one called BR-Dvorak on this website, is exactly the same disposition of English Dvorak, only adapted to the ABNT keyboard; the second, would correspond to the adaptation of Dvorak’s principles to the Portuguese language, the ultra-adaptation, the creation of today’s native Brazilian keyboard.

I entrusted myself, then, this ultra-adaptation task, and at that time, I used as a reference the trabalho dos franceses na criação do teclado Dvorak francês [http://web.archive.org/web/20110706154744/http:/www.algo.be/ergo/dvorak-fr.html] (french work on the creation of french Dvorak keyboard), and also the análise da freqüência das letras no português do Brasil disponível no saite Aldeia Numa Boa [http://web.archive.org/web/20110706154744/http:/www.numaboa.com.br/criptologia/matematica/estatistica/freqPortBrasil.php] (analysis of Brazilian Portuguese letters frequency available on the website Aldeia Numa Boa), whose idea of getting texts to analyze on  Biblioteca do Estudante de Língua Portuguesa [http://web.archive.org/web/20110706154744/http:/www.bibvirt.futuro.usp.br/index.php] (Library of the Portuguese Language Student) I borrowed. This first version was interesting, but still wasn’t the exact application of Dvorak’s principles. I only got to really understand these principles when I entered the saite sobre o teclado Dvorak do Shiar [http://web.archive.org/web/20110706154744/http:/shiar.org/happy/txts/dvorak.php] (website about Shiar’s Dvorak keyboard), from whom I borrowed the idea of organizing the letters frequency data by summing up the use of each finger and each hand.

I also got in touch with the professor José Marcelino Poersch, from PUC-RS in Porto Alegre, who had already entrusted himself, between 1987 and 1991, the task of creating a better suited keyboard for the Portuguese Language, but using different criteria. His work is available in the section “Língua da Gente” and it was quite useful because it corroborates not only the frequency analysis I have done, but also the one from “Aldeia Numa Boa”. Moreover, his project made me realize what were digrams and trigrams and why they are so important for typing analysis.

To all of the above mentioned, to Nando Florestan, Luiz Portella, Heitor Moraes, and all of the forum participants, I appreciate the effort, time and ideas given.