Okay, this is bordering on magical thinking.

You have to remember that Dvorak didn't have computers or optimize for their use.  He couldn't run through entire books and compare their resulting metrics, except very slowly.  Similarly, he couldn't have known that keyboards would be much easier to press than typewriters.

Dvorak's layout, as it turns out, is still very good, but do not assume it is better for no reason.  Not only is the scenario different, but we also have more powerful ways to compare layouts.

AHK is not available either.  But perhaps I should have elaborated on why I find this inelegant: it requires remembering two sets of characters.  Sometimes this key is s, but when you press ctrl, that other key becomes s.  What about when you want to type ctrl+s s? 

The breaking straw, though, was the shortcuts that don't use ctrl.  In some cases, shortcuts are single-letter: say, s, which simply does not work. I did not like dealing with these various rules for things that were previously unified in my mind.  So I googled, and found that it was not necessary.

Well, there was no "ls -l" back when dvorak designed his layout :P

Edit: more serious answers

Awesome!  Just made "vs" an alias of "cd", one of the more awkward commands in colemak.

Why don't you make ls a one letter alias. I currently have "d" set up to the show directory command and it is very pleasant, being easily able to browser around.

@ultrazelda64 - What version of Linux are you using?

After using Colemak for so long, I'm not that good on Dvorak anymore. I tried it for about 30 mins the other day and it was a disaster. But then again its no different than me trying to type this sentence on Colemak right now. You have no idea how many times I'm having to correct my mistakes. Even when typing one letter at a time so slowly.

New Dvorak user here. I am at 30wpm 100% acc. on Dvorak into my first week, so I am still learning. I've DL'd a colemak map as well as map image for possible practice on the side; I may convert after my trials with Dvorak. This will be the first place to know.

I'd have to say that the shortcut key complaints do not really bother me with Dvorak. W/V/Z/Q/M shortcuts are a simple pinching motion to execute. Plus I use different finger and thumb combos so it becomes a matter of versatility.

Not having to reach the bottom row as much in Dvorak is much too overlooked IMO. The bottom row puts the most strain on the fingers. And don't overlook the digraphs either they are quite pleasant. There are some very noticeable digraphs it Dvorak. "H" the most prominent digraph in english (besides the vowels) is very well executed in Dvorak with its ch, th, sh, wh, and gh combos. I think it all comes down to personal preference at this time though, in terms of choice, as we have yet to arrive at an optimal layout.

My only complaint of Colemak is that it doesn't exploit digraphs to their full potential, but neither does Dvorak for that matter. It is a very technical process- arriving at the optimal layout. Hopefully forums and layouts like Colemak bring more attention to this matter and hopefully instigate further investigations into optimization.

There are many more considerations outside of distance and alteration to investigate.

My worst shortcut experience with Dvorak was hitting Ctrl+W when I meant Ctrl+V – thereby closing the window instead of copying what I'd written so I lost my post. That ticked me off every time. ;)

Hmm..

Bottom row colemaks not in dvorak: c /? .< ,>
Bottom row dvoraks not in colemak: q j w ;:

Carplax: Both dvorak/colemak have 9% bottom-row use
Alice in wonderland ch1: 9.6%/10.5%

I guess it could make a moderate difference (a few % points), but doesn't seem like a gigantic change.  I think I do prefer punctuation symbols on the top row, as long as row-switching is not worsened.  However, putting them on the left side damages shortcut potential. 

Conventional wisdom says we're already close to optimal, since the various optimized layouts (imak, dvorak, colemak, workman, norman, QGMLWB, etc?) tend to do better at certain things at the cost of others.  If you improve on digraphs, chances are something else would be made slightly worse, etc, so, as you say, you ought to just pick those optimizations which you personally prefer.

Aside from the obvious shortcuts, some very weird considerations have been analyzed here, including ease-of-learning (tarmak transitional layouts) wrist angles (angle/wide mod - Dreymar's sig), altgr-shortcut usability (via a wide mod) vs Dreymar's capslock-extend mappings...  The rabbit hole goes pretty deep.

:

yuppy, puppy, act, burn, cough, lolz...

Those are harder on dvorak.  Carplax has a list of hard words (though I'm not sure I'd agree with some).

Wonder if this makes it worth swapping , and .

Unless one-handed is required (less likely than with, e.g. shortcuts), I disagree.

L8Fan: if you want a consideration that hasn't really been considered before, consider the notion that our hands are most comfortable curved (e.g. qwerty AWEF JIO; positions) rather than in standard home-row.  It'd be interesting to have a layout for which those positions are home row (the top row would displace some numbers).