meg@sii.UUCP (Marta Greenberg) (08/09/84)
I asked for information on one handed terminals a few weeks
ago. Here is a summary on the responses I received.
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Most answered concerned the terminal from Microwriter.
A few excerpts:
Microwriter makes a one handed terminal. I have one and
it is reasonably easy to learn. Has its own memory (8K)
and an RS-232 port so you can talk to the rest of the world
contact them at (212) 319-8602
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Microwriter
251 East 61st Street, New York, NY 10021
Telephone: (212) 319-8602 Telex: 424208 (HAIN)
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Their thing costs $499. Looks interesting. Doubt that it ever occurred
to the company that it would be useful to a one-handed person. One possible
problem: the Microwriter is right-handed. Also you need 5 fingers on the
hand. It probably would be simple to build a left-handed "keyboard",
if necessary. For that matter, having seen their literature, it would not
be difficult to scratch-build the whole thing, tho not for $499 in design
engineering, parts, and construction!
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[ The next excerpt contains a request, so I've included the author's
net address.]
It features
some editing commands, a 16 character lcd display, battery operation, 8k
of local storage for remote operations, and an rs232 port. If you see a
manual, rather than just a sales blurb, I would like to see how each of
the characters is encoded.
Don Taylor, tektronix!tekig1!dont
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I also received information on the Chord keyboard:
There have been a number of "chord keyboards" talked about.
Most require you to memorize ASCII and press the bits with
one hand. However, a few years back there was some discussion
in what was then called the Bell Labs Free Press (which eventually
was replaced by netnews) that IBM had an internal Chord Keyboard
that was wonderful, but nobody could get one. It apparently had
4x5 keys, done in such a way that you pressed either one key, two
keys, or four keys with one finger (by hitting the space between
two keys or the space in a corner). There was a 5 position
thumbwheel that served as a sort of shift key. The result was that
there were plenty of characters for ASCII (or perhaps it was EBCDIC)
plus common digrams and trigrams, all without leaving the home row.
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"The Chord Keyboard" by Nathaniel Rochester,
Frank C. Bequaert and Elmer M. Sharp. IEEE Computer,
Volume 11, Number 12 (December 1978), pp 57-63.
The keyboard is essentially as described above. However,
there were 2 rows of 5 keys for the four fingers and 4 keys
for the thumb. This gave 27 finger positions ("dimples") -
ten positions with one key pressed, thirteen positions with two
keys pressed and four positions with four keys pressed and an 8
position "thumbwheel" - four positions with one key pressed,
three possibilities with two adjacent keys pressed and the "null"
key - no thumb keys pressed. It was possible to change the
keyboard relatively easily from a left-handed to a right-handed
version.
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Not a pointer to a one handed terminal but this reply has some
interesting info:
This is a sort of specialized product. I have never seen or heard of
one, *HOWEVER*, it should be easy to make a microcomputer do a fine
job. If you would be interested in making an IBM-PC be a one-handed
terminal, I have a communication program that I could modify for the
purpose (or you could too -- I wrote it, made it public domain, and
distribute the sources in C). I have seen a program for the IBM-PC that
has an option to support people who have trouble hitting two keys at
once. The program is the word processor PC-WRITE, available *FOR FREE*
if you can find someone to copy it from, or for a distribution charge
of $10 from the author, Bob Wallace, at
Quicksoft
219 First N. #224
Seattle, WA 98109
(206) 282-0452
When you select the (configuration) option for one-hand use, the shift
type keys become "sticky" -- i.e. you hit the shift key, and the *next*
key you hit will be shifted. You don't have to hit two keys at once. I
have also seen programs that patch the operating system to make the
keyboard operate this way all the time.
I don't know if this is of any help at all, but I would be a little
surprised if there were enough market to produce such a specialized
terminal. Microcomputers are affordable though, and make *good*
terminals.
Bennett Todd
...{decvax,ihnp4,akgua}!mcnc!ecsvax!bet
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Thanks to everyone who helped out.
Marta Greenberg, decvax!sii!meg