jones@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879) (06/13/91)
The discussion of track balls leads me to remember the keyboard on my old HP 9836 (RIP). That machine had a knob on the keyboard, easily reached by the left pinky without a great leap from the home row. The knob was a circle about 3 cm in diameter with a raised edge, set flush with the keyboard near the upper left corner. It would spin freely in either direction with only a slight amount of friction, and it gave input to the computer with a rotary shaft encoder of some kind. The knob moved the cursor in two dimensions, with the shift key selecting the direction. If I remember correctly, un-shifted knob rotation moved the cursor horizontally, shift-knob was vertical. Prior to the domination of HP by UNIX, HP had a screen editor that was tightly integrated with the knob, and I still hold that that editor was one of the best I've encountered from the point of view of ease of learning without a manual. From my experience using the knob, it was better than a mouse for text editing because it was constrained to move in only one dimension at a time. You'd home in on the right line, then home in on a character, without the awkward problems mice cause with slipping up or down a line as you seek a character on a particular line. In addition, the knob let me switch between typing and cursor positioning much faster than a mouse simply because I didn't have to move my hands as far from the home row. For coarse graphics, I'd vote in favor of a mouse, but for fine graphics, where you're trying to get precise alignment of items on the screen, I think the knob was again a winning technology. I conclude that I'd like something like HP's knob on my keyboard as well as a mouse off to the side, and for most purposes, I'd like them to be completely equivalent, so that motion of either would move the cursor. Doug Jones jones@cs.uiowa.edu
rsw@cs.brown.EDU (Bob Weiner) (06/14/91)
In article <6449@ns-mx.uiowa.edu> jones@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879) writes: > From my experience using the knob, it was better than a mouse for text > editing because it was constrained to move in only one dimension at a > time. You'd home in on the right line, then home in on a character, > without the awkward problems mice cause with slipping up or down a line > as you seek a character on a particular line. In addition, the knob let > me switch between typing and cursor positioning much faster than a mouse > simply because I didn't have to move my hands as far from the home row. > > For coarse graphics, I'd vote in favor of a mouse, but for fine graphics, > where you're trying to get precise alignment of items on the screen, I > think the knob was again a winning technology. > > I conclude that I'd like something like HP's knob on my keyboard as well > as a mouse off to the side, and for most purposes, I'd like them to be > completely equivalent, so that motion of either would move the cursor. > The Isopoint device (as featured on Outbound portable Macs) and successor technology is being developed to be extremely cheap and much more accurate than mouse pointing. It is much easier to reach than the know since it is essentially a roller-bar that also moves left and right and is placed right below the space bar. I believe future generation technology is aiming for up to 300-dot-per-inc placement precision. I have no more information, so no use in following up to me. Bob -- Some day, designers will understand that user interfaces are for users. -- Bob Weiner rsw@cs.brown.edu