andyt@kontron.UUCP (Andy Thornton) (03/25/86)
under the spreading UN*X tree the village programmer sits.... There are a WHOLE BUNCH of different keyboards availible. Dvorak keyboards are availible for anyone who wants to take the, small amount, of trouble to find and buy one. They are more expensive because they are not popular. New keyboard layouts are being designed all the time, BYTE magazine a while back had an article on an experimental IBM keyboard, the durn thing looked like it had been melted. There was also a text entry device that was a hemi- sphere that your hand rested on. There were only 5 keys and several words had also been programmed into the ROM. Speed increases were horrific! All it took was a 6 week course to retrain. These are availible, at increased prices. QWERTY keyboards were specificily designed to slow down typists because the mechanical typewriters could not keep up with human fingers. (We're talking cicra 1880's here.) One should take the 2 and 1/2 minutes to investigate something before filling the air with misinformation. ============================================================================= andyt @ voder!kontron!andyt ============================================================================= The above is a note of personal irriatation: Kontron, my plants, Edgar Cayce, or the Society for Bogus Research should be held reponsible.
kwh@bentley.UUCP (KW Heuer) (04/01/86)
In article <651@kontron.UUCP> kontron!andyt (Andy Thornton) writes: >... There was also a text entry device that was a hemisphere that your hand >rested on. There were only 5 keys.... Speed increases were horrific! I've heard about these things. How do they work? With 5 keys there are only 32 chords, so I would expect that some/all characters require two chords to enter. How does the device recognize the end of one chord and the beginning of the next? Do the keys in a chord have to be pressed simultaneously? How close is simultaneous? (I am reminded of the popular misconception about the CTRL key: "to log out, press CTRL and D at the same time". False. The true sequence is press CTRL, press D, release both (either order). I've seen so many beginners trying to press both at once, and hitting the D a split-second sooner... But I digress.) I'd appreciate any clarifications from knowledgable folks. If you send e-mail I'll summarize to the net. Karl W. Z. Heuer (ihnp4!bentley!kwh), The Walking Lint