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.

Comments

Re:Nevermind the Fucking Keyboard!

[grammar nazi]

The methodology and remarkable benefits are itemized in the patent. Remarkably, those 24 selections constitute 99.5% of the typing in typical English text ... Since one cannot see the keys inside the cavities, their character assignments can be reassigned for optimum alphabet distribution in any language with up to 48 characters and punctuation marks.

As the grammar nazi, let me be the first to point out that the English language commonly uses more than 24 characters. Let's see, in this single sentence, I used 22 different characters. That's close to the maximum already, in one sentence. Each character represents more than 0.5% in that sentence as well.

Finally, this isn't a grammar note, rather a progression analysis... Notice that "Since one cannot see the keys inside the cavities, their character assignments can be reassigned for optimum alphabet distribution..." Right. I clearly understand how invisible keys can be assigned for optimum alphabet distribution.

The sales lingo on this site rivals X10.com in uselessness and doublespeak. I'd beware of a SPAM mail attack if were you and you were thinking about purchasing one of these.

Cool, but I'd rather have...

[neuromortis]

...tip sets, like those found in William Gibson novels. As long as we're switching to a different way of talking to our boxes, why not make it something that's a lot more portable and flexible? Yeah, the new interface would be a bit of bitch to learn (now just what gesture do I do for 'q'?), but I think that you could do a lot with a system like this.

For example, the keyboard and the mouse could become the same unit. This would probably be the easiest part of the new interface to learn; after all, how hard is it to point? Even if it was more complicated than that I would be happy to figure it out if it would keep me from having to do that annoying keyboard-mouse-keyboard switch that some programs require.

As for the learning problem in general, we already have keyboarding classes. They'd just have to start teaching the new tech (tip sets) over the old (keyboards). The new generation would laugh at the old until we and our ridiculous habits died out and then keyboarding would join the ranks of punch cards and paper terminals.

Why do I think that tip-sets would be better than your trusty keyboard? Well, what I'm thinking of is gaming. You can go from one game to another and (usually) not have to think about what button does what. Somehow the concept of "My guy needs to jump now." goes straight from your mind to your hands, without passing through any state of "So what button is jump?". I would think that a well-engineered gesture-system would be the same thing. The letters that you wish to enter would go straight from mind to hands. Not that the keyboard doesn't do the same thing, but if your hands are shifted over a bit you'll get all screwed up, whereas the tip-sets are wherever your hands are. You could "type" with your hands lying by your sides or behind your head or whatever. You could also control the mouse pointer from this position, though who knows: maybe tip-sets would bring about an interface that didn't involve a pointer. (Nah.) Also, it would bring us one step closer to a VR environment, something that I believe has a certain amount of potential; especially given the graphics power of today's computers.

Okay, I'm beginning to ramble but the bottom line is that tip-sets are cool and probably more efficient and ergonomic than keyboards and mice.

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OpenNIC. Because it's just better, that's why.

Re:I Love Dvorak

[dw]

My biggest problem with dvorak is that the punctuation seems to be in UNIX unfriendly locations, as it is with qwerty but I find it really difficult to make the jump to a new layout when you fumble at the command line, so I tried my hand at designing a layout for the UNIX/programmer type:

pic
xmodmap

It's not too likely to fly...

[gatesh8r]

Imagine if you will trying to be the marketers of such a device! This odd-looking device that is suppose to be a good source of ergonomics and make more use of the thumbs. Even so, I know of a few reasons why it won't take off:

1) People are reluctant to change. Most people have already adapted to the QWERTY-style of keyboard because it's the most common, and I'm sure those who like and can find a DVORAK keyboard use them as well.

2) Gamers won't be pleased to have something that would restrict the use of other devices... those that don't use a joystick are likely to be using the keyboard, the mouse, or the combonation of the two, as in Quake (duh. btw, if you find someone that uses a joystick with Quake, hit them with a newspaper and rub their noses into the joystick and go "Noooooo..." See if they stop :-)

3) Training costs of having to teach *each* person that you stick this keyboard with -- of course if a computer is *down* and this keyboard is the only one available, you can't expect them to know how to switch keyboards; so it makes sence to the PHBs out there that you should train them all... that takes time and money.

Anyway, my $0.02