Slashdot Mirror
Pyramid Shaped Keyboard
Lordkolya wrote in to tell us about a pyramid shaped keyboard. It's supposed to be ergonomic, but it sure is ugly. I still need to try one of the Kinesis keyboards out. It's time for me to change keyboards again. I dunno if I can learn a new chording keyboard. I've tried a few one handed boards and had bad luck. Maybe I'm not destined to learn any more chords then E-A-D.
When he demonstrated the orginal computer mouse, Doug Engelbart used a one handed chorded keyboard for his left hand at the same time. The system that they developed allowed users to type all characters using just the chords on the left hand, but they still had a normal keyboard... Why? Because the standard keyboard was pretty efficient. So, what did they use the chorded keyboard for? Functions. Copy, paste, print, etc were all associated with chord combinations. This way, you move your hands away from the keyboard to use the mouse and chord when you want to do functional stuff. But, when you're typing you put both hands on the keyboard and pound away.
The learning curve for a two-handed chorded keyboard is sort of long, but not rediculous. Learning a new layout (e.g., Dvorak) on a standard keyboard takes about 20 hours (e.g., 1 hour a day every weekday for a month). Chording is a learned skill, which can be acquired relatively quickly. I'm guessing it's faster if you have piano skills...
Buy Hex-Rated Stuff, fight the DMCA!
On a normal keyboard, I usually leave one hand on the keyboard at all times when using the mouse. This hand can hit all the modifier keys(control, option, commands, shift - on a Mac), for when pressing those keys is necessary in what you're doing with the mouse.
With this keyboard it's designed so the modifier keys are split between both hands. So when your right hand goes to the mouse, it becomes difficult to hit the modifier keys with the left.
Also, say what you want about flat keyboards, but being able to rest your hands on the desk or wrist pad is nice. Do you really want to be holding your arms up in the air for hours on end while typing?
...I've often wanted a chair that had a keyboard in each armrest, the left & right sides of a standard keyboard, yet you just move your fingers vertically for the upper and lower rows, or press down for the home row. I doubt anyone could learn it that knows how to hunt and peck, but us touch typists that go 120 wpm could benefit from it after you get used to it.
Who knows, maybe one day will figure out a way, but I just don't see voice replacing typing, many people can type faster than they talk.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
I've got a Kinesis Contoured 'board at work now, but I'm going to return it.
First, the good: Learning the new key positions wasn't very difficult. They're pretty natural, and the hand position is very nice. Less stress than a standard 'board. The keys themselves are mechanical, not membrane, and low-pressure. Very nice feel, very positive contact, although not much of a click. There's an audible click that you can toggle.
On the bad side, the 'board is almost useless except for typing characters. The control (shift, alt, etc) keys are in difficult positions. A design goal of the 'board, they tell me, was to make key combos like 'CTRL-SHIFT-S' easier to hit with two hands. This may be better for your hands, but at high speed it's very very hard to coordinate two hands to nail a combo like this (and I play guitar, so I know a little about coordinating hand movements).
There's no numeric keypad, but there is another 'layer' that can be toggled with a function key or foot switch. Kind of a pain. The 'board's programmable, if you spring $50 for the extra chip (with that and the footswitch, you're easily over $300), and this helps a little, but not enough.
Bottom line for me: the keys feel beautiful and typing characters is very easy, but the 'board's nearly useless for anything else. It's hard to hit function keys and key combos, hard to use with one hand while keeping a hand on the mouse - in other words, nearly half of what I do. Too bad.
BUT if you do nothing but type all day, buy this board and never let it out of your sight. Your life will improve dramatically. If I could afford to have 2 'boards, this would be one of them.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
The truth isn't hard to see under the FUD: the QWERTY layout was designed to speed typists on the original machine by reducing the frequency of jams. It did this at some cost (of the most frequently used keys, ETAION, only one (A) is on the home row, and that under the left pinky, arguably the weakest finger). It was a reasonable tradeoff at the time but became a standard, with all the attendent entrenched opposition to change. This is where the FUD starts to come in. Dvorak et al overstated the advantages of their alternatives, and this gave the established manufacturers enough room to "debunk" their claims, launching hundred years of bickering.
-- MarkusQ
Thus slowing down the typist. True, it did speed up typing by preventing jams, however with the advent of computer keyboards that is no longer necessary. Therefore, the QWERTY keyboard slows down typists and must be eliminated.
I can feel my sanity, beyond my reach and slipping...
the original layout was not meant to slow down the typist, but to reduce the chance that two letters next to each other in a word
The speed of a typist is pretty inversly related to the distance between keys. If the keys are far apart, then you hit them slower. So, yeah, designing a layout to move the keys farther apart is designing a layout to slow you down.
So, in fact, the querty layout was designed to speed up typing, by requiring less of an artificial pause between keystrokes.
You're confusing yourself. The user is as slow as the keyboard needs, so the keyboard doesn't need to impose an artificial pause. If the keyboard doesn't need to cripple the user, it's because the user's already as crippled as necessary.
Have any vi users tried the dvorak keyboard? I imagine it would be immensely confusing for a while at least. I know that when I'm typing something, I don't think "gee I need to go down a line so I'll type v", I think "press the letter under my index finger."
Btw, sorry if this sounds flamey; I don't mean it that way...I guess being a novelist from South Africa I got a bit peeved that your comment was rated funny ;) Keep in mind that the article is on a site with a Russian TLD (.ru).
A word can paint a thousand pictures
Ever thought about that most software was designed for the qwerty-layout? (think about some emacs shortcuts...)
So switching to another layout comes with a double effort: you have to learn new letter positions (for typing) and even more annoying the key-combos (CTRL-C, CTRL-A, CTRL-E...) aren't where they feel right.