anthony@convex.csd.uwm.edu (Anthony J Stieber) (05/13/91)
In article <6747@husc6.harvard.edu> conrad@popvax.uucp (M20400@c.nobili) writes: >either! Dvorak keyboards are much superior (IMnvHO)! Many of you people spend Once, I set up a Dvorak keyboard on my machine. Although I didn't seem to type any faster (not surprising since I was just learning) , I almost immediatly felt how much more comfortable it was to type. Although I only used it over a couple days, I feel that the Dvorak layout is much better than qwerty. Unfortunatly, I have to use far too many different machines in the course of a day to be able to have dvorak setup on all of them. Trying to use qwerty and to learn Dvorak at the same time would be horrifying. >The real solution for very small (handheld) computers would seem to me to be >chording keyboards. I think I remember having heard something about a (Brit?) >(no offense meant -- I was near the end of the line) handheld with one? Does >anyone know if this is true or just a figment of my fevered mind? Are there >any standards for chording keyboards? Anyone know why the manufacturers have >basically ignored this idea? (OK, so the answer to that last one is probably >the same as the answer to the question about why so many of you use QWERTY....) It's real. The company is Microwriter Ltd, they call their chord keyboard system "microwriting". It has six keys, and can generate the entire ASCII character set. The chords are set up to be mnemonic, letters that are use more often, have a single key. Their current machine is called the AgendA. I haven't actually seen this machine, but I have seen the original Microwriter and have the manual for one. This looks like a good time to repost the review and list of chord commands I have. As far as I know, this is the only commercial product to ever use a full chording keyboard. Whoops, that's not true. The US Post Office uses chord keyboards for high speed sorting of mail. I don't know what company actually produces the equipment however. Anyone know? The only other work on chord keyboards was done by Douglas Englebart (the inventor of the mouse) as part of the NLS and by IBM in a seperate project. The way you're supposed to use a mouse is to have a three button mouse in one hand, and a five key chordboard in the other. The five keys selected the alphabetic portion of the ASCII character set, the three mouse buttons were for shifting to the other parts. This eliminates the problem of having to take your hands off the keyboard to move the mouse around The system did support a full stroke qwerty keyboard but it wasn't neccesary to actually use the system. The IBM project was a bit different, it used more than one key per finger. I've got a report on it I can dig out if anyone wants. >Personally, I am waiting for cortical jacks at the base of the skull.... ;-) How about a thin ethernet port in the forehead? :-) Actually, I would want to minimize the amount of non-wetware in my skull. Perhaps a small non-metalic inducting coil under the skin? >P.S.: ' , . P Y F G C R L / = > A O E U I D H T N S - <--- Read my home row and weep! > ; Q J K X B M W V Z > >guess you should also be able to make a new termcap for UNIX (I always log in I don't think it can be done through termcap, but the entire tty driver could be replaced, which is a lot of work. The other way to do it, is to use a pseudo-tty. A program like script, window, or screen under BSD unix could do this. -- <-:(= Anthony Stieber anthony@csd4.csd.uwm.edu uwm!uwmcsd4!anthony Psion Mailing List subscriber submissions psion ----------\ the (human) moderator psion-owner -------+--@csd4.csd.uwm.edu subscriptions and file requests psion-request ----/
jims@momenta.com (Jim Straus) (05/14/91)
anthony@convex.csd.uwm.edu (Anthony J Stieber) writes: >As far as I know, [the AgendA] is the only commercial product to ever use a full >chording keyboard. Whoops, that's not true. The US Post Office uses >chord keyboards for high speed sorting of mail. I don't know what company >actually produces the equipment however. Anyone know? I have just gotten some information on another chording keyboard company. It is called The Bat and is produced by a company called Infogrip Inc in Baton Rouge, LA. They sell two chording keyboards together (both allow for generating all the keys of a standard keyboard), so that one hand can be setting up while the second finishing a chord. The literature I have describes a serial version, but conversation with the president of the company elicited that they are building versions for hooking in as replacement keyboards for IBM compatibles and an ADB version for Macs.
tonl@hpuamsa.neth.hp.com (Ton 't Lam CRC) (05/21/91)
Subject: Velotype keyboard Talking about keyboards. I saw some years ago a very innovating keyboard called the 'velotype'. The trick was that syllables are type in one stroke. The layout of the keyboard is that the vowels are in the center of the keyboard and the consonants on the left and right side. Now typing a words like 'new'. You press simultaneously the letters 'n', 'e' and 'w', and voila ready. The word 'thing' goes in the same way. Press 't', 'h', 'i', 'n' and 'g'. The trick is that the micro processor checks the syntax. There will be no word starting with 'ht' so it must be 'th'. 'gn' is possible (i.e. sign), so you have to type 'ng' in the normal way. The net result is you can type at speaking speed. I remember this 'velotype' will do fine in Dutch, English, German and French. For some reason this neat keyboard was not recognized by the computer compagnies. Ton 't Lam.
bson@rice-chex.ai.mit.edu (Jan Brittenson) (05/22/91)
In a posting of [21 May 91 08:01:56 GMT] tonl@hpuamsa.neth.hp.com (Ton 't Lam CRC) writes: > I saw some years ago a very innovating keyboard called the 'velotype'. > The trick was that syllables are type in one stroke. After reading this far, I got the impression you were talking about stenography. No? > The trick is that the micro processor checks the syntax. There will > be no word starting with 'ht' so it must be 'th'. ... For some reason > this neat keyboard was not recognized by the computer compagnies. I wonder why... /* ht.c */ typedef struct _ht_ { struct _ht_ *l_ht, *r_ht; HT_ID *ht_id; } HT; ht_print(ht) HT *ht; { printf("{%lx, %lx}", ht->l_ht, ht->r_ht); } ;-) -- Jan Brittenson bson@ai.mit.edu