Keyboard Layouts for the 21st Century?

jules asks: "Trying to do some programming on an iBook the other day brought to my attention the fact that despite the constant improvements to the design of computer hardware and software, the keyboards we use are still a throwback to the early 1980s. I mean - my Mac doesn't have room for page up/down or home/end keys, but it devotes a whole key to a sort of double-S shape that I will never press. And my PC keyboards all waste plastic on a backwards-apostrophe key and a scroll-lock (+ LED!), while functions that you use all the time, such as switching between windows, cut/copy/paste, back/forwards, undo/redo etc, all have to double-up with other keys.. Have any organizations actually tried to re-invent the keyboard recently? (..not counting the manufacturers who stick a few 'multimedia' keys along the top for consumer PCs). Would this be doomed to failure because of the tens of thousands of legacy apps that expect things to be the way they are? What sort of keys would you include in your fantasy keyboard layout?" It's not just the keys on your keyboard that are important, it's also how you arrange them. What kind of keyboard arrangements might we see in the future?

Comments

YESS!!! GIMME SLACK!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh damn. I've been draeming about this for a few months now.

I want a keyb that has pry-out keys which each contain a resistor/whatever to mark what they are.
Then I can remap my keyb without confusing my coworkers (well, some of them) and I don't have to wonder which mapping is in effect. Also I want to be able to "break" teh numpad off and move it to the left side and back, or even leave it totally seperate.

And I want a pony.

Alternatively, an LCD touchscreen wouldn't be half bad.

Hey IBM, if you make either of these things can you please give me a big fat check? Or at least a demo unit? You b'stards seem to make things I think of whether I keep the idea to myself or not... and god knows that simply thinking of an idea on your own proves that you own it. ;-)

okay i luv you buh bye
~the alternating coward

Sys Req

[ejaw5]

Anybody care to explain the purpose (if any) for the Sys Req button (shared by Print Screen). My impression of it is that it may have had some use way back in the day before my time, but can't think of any purpose today.

Keyboards not just for typing

[A_Duck_Named_Ping]

Realize that the PC revolution was fueled by worprocessing and spreadsheet software, which both lend themselves to keyboard/keypad input devices. At some point -- aren't we living in the future yet? -- the input devices must make an evolutionary leap. If you look in the video editing and medical imaging field, the input devices reflect the nature of how the work is done (dials, sliders, toggle buttons). A fictional example of one possibility is the type of 3d input device used in Minority Report. We still are mostly creatures of the keyboard (damn blogs!), but at some point, the next killer app may bring about the emergence of a better input device. Oh yeah, and voice recognition might not suck so much someday ;-) -duck

I used to have...

[sawilson]

A keyboard with completely blank keys. Sure pissed
of co-workers wanting to borrow my system, which
was the problem and the point. It took a few hours
with some 200 grit sandpaper. I even sanded off the
little home key nubbies. :) I'd have to mentally
remember "ok, pink goes on key next to capslock,
skip two from left pointer, put right pointer there".

My Preferred keyboard

[jaavaaguru]

My preferred keyboard has things like cut, copy, paste, home, end, undo, help. I find it quite useful.

LCD Keyboard

[iamacat]

Better yet, why not design a future keyboard with a small, backlighted LCD on top of each key? Than each OS or program can customize key labels. So when you change the input language, labels change. And in Quake the numeric keys will really show different weapons.

Also imagine the pure joy of virus writers when they realize just what they can do with the victim's keyboard.

Programming and dvorak

[IdahoEv]

Have any of you programmers actually used Dvorak or Maltron keyboards

Yeah, every day. I switched to dvorak six years ago. True, the pure dvorak layout is not well designed for programming. But it's advantages in English are astounding.

I use dvorak layout on a Kinesis contoured keyboard.

Cool thing is, the 'board is hardware macro programmable. A footswitch puts the keyboard into "second layer", which normally maps the right hand keys to a keypad. Instead, I have the second layer activate macros. On my left hand, keys with the footswitch down activate HTML macros, like followed by eight left arrows and a carraige return. On my right, single keys activate macros, like "t" (where K is on a qwerty) gives me a pair of curly braces on two lines, and arrows back up to put me on a line in between them, like this:

{
<cursor left here>
}

one key in the middle of the board saves me about eight awkward keystrokes.

footswitch-"f" gives me:

for (<cursor left here>;;)

saving me about a dozen keystrokes.

I've got dozens of such macros. I never ever type "" or "{" or "(" (except I just did :). Every common syntax, keyword, or markup tag is a one-key macro. I rip off HTML/XML and C/perl/java like nobodys' business.

No carpal-tunnel strain from reaching for weirdly placed "{" and "" keys all the time, because they're all in my macros.

The 'board is USB and mac/pc switchable and the macros are in hardware, so I can take it with me to group meeting / LAN party / whatever and work with any machine, anywhere, with all my layout customizations and macros.

And I won't even get started on the kinesis' contour shape, which addresses 8+ major ergonomic concerns where things like the MS Natural and such only address 1.

I can switch between qwerty/dvorak with a keystroke, without losing my macros, so that friends can try out the keyboard.

I've been using this setup for half a decade. Kicks ass, I'm telling you.

Re:This first post brought to you buy

[Mr. Slippery]

The fact that QWERTY tends to be slower than other methods is an unfortunate side-effect of this engineering.

The assertation that QWERTY is significantly slower than Dvorak or other layouts also seems to be a myth.

The "SysRq" Key

[BobStikigreen]

It's the REAL bastard key on the PC's layout. I always suspected it was for compatibility with an IBM terminal emulation or something. I only remember one program that used it, DESQview. For all of you that are confused, DESQview was a multi-tasker for MS-DOS. If you were an old-school MS-DOS hacker you may have used it. If not, be happy that you were spared the pain =). Can anyone else name an app that used it? I'm talking default mappings here. Please spare me the "you used MS-DOS you infidel! I've been using UNIX since I was in the womb!@#!#" nonsense, some of us were young and had shitty computers.

My Highly Subjective Opinion

[RAMMS EIN]

No use for the backwards apostrophe? Obviously you don't do a lot of scripting and TeX. :-p

IMHO, you should not depend on the big boys to bring you a good keyboard. They still only ship the purposefully inefficient QWERTY keyboards... Dvorak keyboards are available, but at outrageous prices. My advice is to help yourself, and make your own keyboard and your own key bindings.

I started by taking a permanent marker and drawing the Dvorak symbols on my QWERTY keyboard. Moving the keys is not an aption, as for some reason they won't fit in places other than the ones they are meant for. Besides, I get a lot of visitors, and I don't expecrt them to learn Dvorak if they just want to use my computer for a while. Leaving the QWERTY symbols in place accomodates those who need them. Be warned though: after you switch to Dvorak, your typing spood will be more awful than you ever imagined. If you persist, you will soon find yourself in the situation that you can't type on QWERTY nor on Dvorak. If you type a lot, however, you will notice that Dvorak significantly reduces strain. Eventually, your typing speed will increase beyond what you had on QWERTY, simply because the upper bound is higher.

One more note about Dvorak: Dvorak also designed keyboards for people with only one hand. These are highly popular (in as far as people consider anything other than QWERTY, that is) today, because they allow you to type with one hand and mouse|phone|drink| with the other. Their layout could also be useful for PDA's, wihich typically have limited space for keys.

Besides something radical like changing your keyboard layout, there are various other things you can do, most notably, assigning hotkeys to common events. What is possible and how it can be done largely depends on the software you are running. If yau are using X11, chances are your function keys mostly go unused. In many window managers, they can be bound to window management events, so that you can, for example, use to switch to the next window, to go to the previous one, to maximize the current window, and to iconify it. This is easily done in WindowMaker through the Wprefs app shipped with it. If you want to assign other shortcuts to common operations like use to save a file instead of +, you could supposedly change your keyboard setup so that generates +. If you want to assign keyboard shortcuts to operations that previously hod none defined, for example, Copy and Paste as New in GIMP, you probably need some specialized software, which I think Apple and MicroSoft ship with their GUIs, but I am not aware of any such software for XFree86.

Those are just a few things you can do to improve your productivity here and now, without waiting for the big guys to do it for you. I've upped my productivity, up yours!

---
"When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout."
-- Lazarus Long