h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Now of course is the time to introduce a new keyboard layout if ever there was one. So many people hunt and peck, and it really is a disabling form of typing, slowing you down, making you inaccurate, interfering with your thoughts.

I was of the generation and gender which was taught to touch-type, and on a good day I can take near-verbatim notes in meetings, (but not speeches, which tend to be slicker). Even on bad days I am 60+ wpm, accurate. (Just wish I'd been taught shorthand too).

But with so many many people joining-up because of the internet, now is the time to offer a choice of keyboards. The software for changing keyboard layouts is not exactly tricky to deal with. It is the hardware that is a problem. (Other people cannot use my keyboard, becauese too many of the letters have worn off. <smug&gt

B

I think the majority of the teenage population can type pretty decently these days.

Personally I'd like a revamping of the whole system, not just the hardware, because its designed only for those using Latin character set languages and other languages have to be kind of tagged on. Plus I could really use an inverted circumflex on vowels.

While we're at it, does anybody know what key combination to do that little hook stuck on the bottom of 'c' to make it soft? I think its called a 'cidilla', but have never seen it written.

Alt-135 is ç and Alt-128 is Ç

What would you do with an iverted circumflex on vowels? I've seen it in Czech but only on c,s and r (as in Dvorak).

>> Now of course is the time to introduce a new keyboard layout if ever there was one. <<


Because I know you have some connections in the 'puter biz, B, I'll offer you an idea you might want to pursue with some techie design types.

It is agreed that QWERTY and the standard keyboard is too complex and slow for most non-typing users to ever feel happy using it. Sheer size makes it hard to incorporate 101 keys into portable applications. Not all of us are speedy typists and many have fat fingers. QWERTY is doomed.

It is further agreed that 'new' style keypads based on telephone or numberpad systems are confusing as well, especially to Qwerty types who have to learn new skills and unlearn old ones. Stylus applications are diddly and vulnerable and the compression of items into multifunction buttons is too arbitrary. Trying to remember that pressing #1 once is A and twice is B and thrice is C is worse than learning Morse code. Having to remember that O is #6 thrice and X is #9 pressed twice intereferes with creativity and free expression and leads to txtmsg vacuities...

So:

Because most young people are quite adept at controlling a gaming joystick (which in its simplest forms is but a mouse with point and click abilities) I propose a system where the alphabet (and other characters, numbers etc) appear on screen as targets. Point to A and click, point to B and click. The letters can even be moving about and floating to keep it challenging.

The speed and dexterity of most young users will enable them to write "As You Like It" as quickly as defeating Tetris invaders.

The design would require that some part of the screen contain linked representations of the 101 keys and a third and fourth button on the joystick would function as ALT and SHIFT etc... There would need to be a MODE shift button as well... for Phone, Notepad, Music, e-mail, Webrowsing, etc.. You get the picture; but many gamers now use six, seven and even more buttons. Maybe it has to be a pistol-grip and fit in one hand like a cell phone or Star Trek tricorder/communicator. Maybe the display is heads-up, on a pair of specs... or maybe a globe on the end of a stick like a hand held microphone...

Anyway, get a team together and revolutionise the keyboard/keypad as we know it. I am confident that you will become a gazillionaire and only ask for a mere one/half of one%percent of net. (Time being a consideration I might opt for an upfront one-time buyout and get off to see the whirled while I still can.)

peace
~jwf~

Various palmtops use this, an on-screen keyboard you tap. Not nice.

I taught myself to touch-type (there are lots of programs that guide you along) and it seems after all that Sholes's anti-jam layout is also fairly efficient as a left-hand / right-hand division of common letters, and doesn't slow you down after all. So I'm not really looking for a change. Sorry to have brought it up.

I'd propose some sort of holographic or projected keyboard. Then you could have minituarisation without worrying about ergonomics.

Failing that some sort of pressure sensitive matt that sticks on the back of the device and folds out might be good.

I need inverted circumflexes because that's the 3rd tone in pinyin, which is a phoenetic system using latin character to represent Oriental languages, and helps with learning them.

>>Now of course is the time to introduce a new keyboard layout if ever there was one.

Well, my bit of research has revealed that someone did try a year ago and it doesn't seem to have taken off (see http://www.xpertkeyboard.com ). It even has the advantage that, unlike the Dvorak, it isn't completely different from QWERTY.

I do remember seeing a new keyboard from Japan featured on the BBC programme Tomorrow's World must be about 12 years ago, which absolutely trounced a speed typist on QWERTY in a live demo (even though the Japanese chap didn't speak very good English, so should have had a disadvantage). I can't find any references to that though I'm afraid - so looks like even that couldn't get off the ground.

Heh, until I just looked at that link, it never occured to me that I could just download something to rearrange my keyboard letters and not actually have to buy a different keyboard. Ok it'd take a while to learn, and no doubt I'd have loads of trouble typing passwords which is something I just do on autopilot, but on the other hand it would be a pretty security measure.

That's

B

I'm sorry, jwf, but for people like me who are just not visually oriented, your idea isn't a winner... I'll stick with QWERTY although I didn't learn typing at school. I did later on, when learning data entry and word processing, and can do 30+ wpm with two fingers (if not being watched!) A friend of mine with disabilities uses 'Dragon Dictate', and speaks what she wants to write. (The problem is that Dragon Dictate is an old programme, and picks up traffic noises (represented in her text as a line of ?????????????? But I am sure there are more modern ones available than DD... and they'd be good for portable apps.)

The projected keyboard is already available: http://www.pc-notetaker.com/vkb/?an=google (keep looking at the graphic in the middle of the page to get the idea). I'm sceptical. The projected keys will lack any kind of tactile feedback, which is necessary in keyboard entry.

As for Joysticks - these would potentially slow down certain sequential key combinations which are made fairly automatically by the fingers - especially when they involve each hand in turn.

Speech input may well become more prevalent as the software gets better. There are privacy issues, though. Would you want your coworkers to hear everything you type?

For speech and for keyboards, the breakthrough may well come with improvements in AI. Most speech is pretty unintellegible: If you edit it down into individual words, it can be very hard to understand what's being said. Yet we manage. This is largely to do with the way we apply an understanding of context which allows us to understand what is *likely* to be said and to filter out backround noise, ums and ahs, repetitions, stammers, slurs and elisions, etc. etc. This kind of approach could be applied to 'predictive text' to give something better than the statistical approach used by spell checkers at the moment.

On the other hand - we're not *that* good at it, as anyone who has misheard a song lyric will attest. (When I was young, I used to think that God's name was 'Harold': 'Our father which art in heaven......' Makes sense, when you think of his son's middle initial)

There's another quite interesting keyboard alternative (principally designed for disabled people) at http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/ . You can even download the software and play with it yourself.

I think that would make me feel ill...

(Have you *looked* at it?)

B

Dasher would be great for people with certain disabilities, Dogster, although I see B's point about it making her .

I get what Edward means about tactile feedback, and one thing I appreciate is aural feedback - this keyboard doesn't have 'clicks', unlike some you could choose in the '80s... but it does have noise. The ultra-modern ones which don't disconcert me.

My keyboard has a click which you can turn off by a particular unusual combination of keys (Left Shift + Right Shift + Ctrl + Alt).

<>

I've played around with Dasher, it's quite fun and doesn't actually make you feel as sick as you might think.

Tetris people Tetris. Space Invaders.
A pistol grip shooter is what's needed.
Shoot the letters out of the sky and a satisfying electronic ricochet is emitted. They tumble and assemble into text crawling across the bottom of the screen. Like all good video games it's a clever combination of the Morse telegraph key and the six gun. That's how the west was one.

~jwf~

I might have a go with dasher when I am feeling less like green snot

B

Anybody here speak Latin, Greek and a Celtic Language (Gaelic or Welsh)? I've been told that Celtic is closest to Italic, which is the root of Latin, but I feel myself that it is closer to Greek and the eastern European languages. Unfortunately, my knowledge of these is limited to a few words. Anybody any ideas?