fostel@ncsu.UUCP (06/30/83)
All this talk of keyboards, programmable keyboards, and touch sensors
has led me to fantasize the keyboards we'll be likely to see in the
late 80's, or sooner if ...
No moving parts! Yes, I think we can meet human engineering criteria
here with tactile feel generated internally -- e.g. a buzz that the finger
tip could feel. Little ridges seperating the keys would be nice too.
The "keytops" would be liquid crystal displays, so that when you talk
about reprogramming the keys, or developing alternate fonts, you would'nt
need to order new tops, or use kludgey overlays. The touch sensitive and
LCD places should not be restricted to the qwerty (Queer tty?) positions
for example I would love a control button just under the space bar where
my thumbs usually hang out.
If I carry this to its logical concluison, then the keyboard become a
tough cheap touch and display unit, not logically unlike a crt screen.
What about the mouse? Well, never having used one I am not yet misty
eyed about not having one. Having played video games, I do find trackballs
to be extremly good for VERY FAST VERY ACCURATE positioning. But of
course they are moving parts. (Sigh.) Fortunately, there is another
possiblity: use the touch sensitive keyboard for position motions. This
has the advantage of not needing to take the fingers off the "key" board.
From the home position, I can easily move my index fingers about in a
2-3 inch circle. The hardware will need to have about 3/16 " resolution
or better to make the keys resolve, so that give me a roughly 10 by 10
field. Not enough for pointing per-say, but plenty for direction of
motion and speed of motion commands to get the thing where you want it.
I played a pong-ish game on a keyboard once with this model and a
(of course the field was only 4 by 4 on nomal keys) little practice
lets you move the cursor to a target spot pretty easily. I suspect the
increased resolution of the mouse or trackball would lose out owing to
the time spent moving from the keys to the pointing device.
Sorry to go on for so long, but my fantasy include someone out there
building one of these things and massproducing it to get the cost down
to perhaps $200. I'd by one for that. (You wipe typists out there,
take note.) When you've built this keyboard and made your fortune,
remember me -- its too much of a nuscance to go out and get a patent ...
----GaryFostel----