KPURCELL@liverpool.ac.UK (Kevin 'fractal' Purcell) (04/11/90)
On 11 Apr 90 06:01:39 GMT Tom Conte (ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!crest.csg.uiuc.edu!conte@edu.indiana.cs.iuvax) said: >The five-key chorded keyboard never made it outside Xerox PARC, >sadly. We'll this ain't so -- There was/is a product sold in the UK in the early 1980's called the MicroWriter. About the size and shape of a sneaker the user laid a hand on the chording keyboard on top of the device. There was two keys for the thumb and one each for the other fingers. The system was rather baudot code like, having a letters shift and figures/punctuation shifts. The display was a multi-segment alpha-numberic LEDs. The processor was a RCA 1802, the only CMOS processor available then, with about 8K RAM. It cost about 500 pounds -- too expensive for me, but they did sell some. The most innovative thing about the whole device was the system used for remembering the chords -- the more used the letter the 'faster' the chord it was assigned. For example the letter E was the middle finger and similarly for A and T. One thumb key was space the other was special codes. The less frequently used letters had more complex chords. The company clianed that you could learn the chords in 1/2 hour, and often demonstrated this at computer shows buy teaching people to "microwrite" whilst visiting the stand. After a couple of weeks of practice speeds of 20 wpm were easily achived with the best performers getting up to 40 wpm. They disappeared after the middle eighties and are now selling the AgendA, a revamped microwriter with chording and alphabetic keyboards and the software onboard can be used to keep an address book, a diary, a notebook and to do wordpocessing. The whole device is a similar size and shape to an Atari Portfolio and is built to a reasonable quality and retails for 199 pounds. I have seen several reviews of this product and it seems well liked, with many saying it was worth the effort learning to use the chording keys. E-v-o-l-v-i-n-g--m-e-m-e-s------------H-a-z-a-r-d-o-u-s--i-f--s-w-a-l-l-o-w-e-d Kevin 'fractal' Purcell S U R F A C E S C I E N C E C E N T R E kpurcell @ liverpool.ac.uk Liverpool University, Liverpool L69 3BX God is in the strange attractors. I speak only for myself
brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) (04/12/90)
I had thought that one of the big pushes for the chord keyboard was that it was faster. 40 wpm certainly isn't impressive as a top speed. I would find it unbearably slow, being used to 90-100 on my qwerty. The idea was that you don't have to move anything, so you can get fast. Is this false? I guess they still have value for special applications where size is very important, or for those with only one hand, but I doubt many would learn to use it if you can't use it as your regular keyboard. How about a double chord keyboard? Clearly no need for shifts etc. on a full 10 key chorder. You would even eliminate the codes that involve difficult combinations of fingers, too -- in fact the most common characters might well be done with one hand. Could that be faster? The advantage of this is that it can still be small, two balls with straps you put on your hands or grasp. I wonder if anything could be done with a split keyboard -- ie. a standard type keyboard, qwerty or dvorak, but split in half. The two halves would be small, and could even be strapped to the arms of a chair or something. (Of course, you need to change habits a bit, or duplicate some keys, as some people may use different fingers for the odd middle key or shifted sequence.) -- Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473