minich@d.cs.okstate.edu (Robert Minich) (07/21/90)
by quinn@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Clark Quinn): | It may turn out that the combination of a five-fingered chord keyboard | for one hand and pointing/clicking device for the other (be it mouse, | trackball, or pen) is the most efficient input method for two hands. | Or consider a ten-keyed chord keyboard (which should easily cover all the | separate keys you might want) that could roll around on the desktop. | It will require, however, a good analysis of the efficiency of various | designs of both the physical characteristics of the keyboards and the | psychological issues in mapping key combinations to characters.. | | I sympathize with the original posters request and hope that further | research might devise such a device. -- Clark Ah, the onward march of ergonomics... There is one thing that hasn't been mentioned here that is very important to many users: not everyone has a full set of fingers/two hands to control these "easy-to-use input" devices. For example, my brother lost his right hand and left forefinger in an accident. He couldn't make full use of a five key chording keyboard, much less a ten key version. In fact, I doubt he'd appreciate a three button mouse. He is agile enough to do shift/cmd/option key combinations with the mouse mainly because those keys are at the corner of the keyboard. For him, multiple clicking is much better than more buttons to deal with simultaneously. Anyone care to think of the interface for Easy Access should one need to use chording? -- ===================================== | | Robert Minich | |_ /| | Oklahoma State University| |\'o.O' | minich@a.cs.okstate.edu |