poggio%sri-tsc@sri-unix.UUCP (02/07/84)
A little elaboration on Kirk Kelley's note about mice and keysets. For those who are unfamiliar with it, the chord keyset was invented to solve the time-consuming and disruptive act of switching a hand from mouse to conventional keyboard and back. The keyset itself is essentially five paddles connected to microswitches which can be operated with either hand. The five paddles on the keyset together with the three mouse buttons (used as a chord) allow any ASCII char (and then some) to be typed. The encoding is a simple binary one which makes it easy to extrapolate to chars whose pattern has not been memorized. Like Kirk, I am also left-handed and use the combination the same way. One week after I first tried the keyset with a mouse, I also felt uncomfortable and perhaps deprived without it; the feeling is similar to working at 300 baud when you are used to 9600. Another comparison is to bicycle toeclips: an annoyance at first, indispensible thereafter. This is not to say that I quit using a conventional keyboard (nor did anyone else that I remember). My threshold was about one word, i. e. when inputting one word or less, I would use the keyset, for more I would switch to the keyboard. Tymshare is the only source I am currently aware of for keysets. I recommend that anyone doing a serious user interface evaluation give keysets a try. --Andy