[net.works] need info on wipe kboard

pollack@uicsl.UUCP (03/23/84)

#N:uicsl:13300004:000:713
uicsl!pollack    Mar 22 17:25:00 1984

In writing a window-based program on a Dandilion, I have been
slowly moving away from ascii keyboard input. I dont
have the ability to add a chord keyboard, so I am limited
to novel uses of windows and menus. For example, numbers which
are constrained in range are easy to enter with a small window,
using the final-position's ratio to the width or height of the window.
I thought a good way to enter text is with a simulation of the
"wipe keyboard" which supposedly has the letters set up in
a easy-to-learn and quick-to-enter topology.

Will someone out there point me to a reference on the "wiping keyboards"
please!


Thanks in advance,


Jordan Pollack
University of Illinois
...pur-ee!uiucdcs!uicsl!pollack

Laws@SRI-AI.ARPA (04/14/84)

From:  Ken Laws <Laws@SRI-AI.ARPA>

Some references to the wipe keyboard may be found in

  E.B. Montgomery, "Bringing Manual Input into the 20th Century:
  New Keyboard Concepts," IEEE Computer, Vol. 15, No. 3, Mar. 1982,
  pp. 11-18.

  K. Ramakrishna, "Wipe Keyboard Slick but Not Practical,"
  IEEE Computer, Vol. 15, No. 8, Aug. 1982, pp. 97-99.

Careful reading of the former has led me to the conclusion that
the wipe keyboard is not an effective entry method, although the
article makes comparisons with QWERTY difficult.  (Comparing
wipes to keystrokes is not fair since some wipes are quite complex
and some keystroke combinations can be done almost in parallel;
word-based statistics ignore the extra wipe per word needed to
enter the terminating space; and comparison of "strokes" needed to
enter the 100 most common words ignores the fact that these short
words are a much smaller fraction of the >>letters<< in normal
text than of the >>words<< in such text.)  I also find it very
suggestive that Montgomery had built several of these wipe
keyboards, but had never tested them for data entry speed against
a QWERTY.

If one had to enter data on a touch-sensitive screen, though,
I suppose wiping would be more efficient than one-finger typing.

					-- Ken Laws
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