A One-Handed Keyboard For $25

Bruce Perens writes "Slashdot has often featured attempts at improvement upon the QWERTY keyboard. Here's a one-handed USB keyboard that you can buy for $25 online, or a bit more at the CompUSA. There's one catch: someone will have to design a keying pattern and hack up software for it. It's a task just crying out for an Open Source project." Bruce has also included on the linked page code with which to read the output from the device.

Comments

Then you can't buy a one-handed keyboard for $25..

[Brento]

Saying that you can buy a one-handed keyboard for $25, but you have to roll your own software, means you're not buying a one-handed keyboard for $25. That's like saying you can buy your own crystal meth for $25 - sure, the ingredients are only $25, but you have to know the recipe and risk life and limb cooking the stuff.

Not that I'd know about those things. (And that applies to both coding my own keyboard drivers as well as cooking meth.)

DVORAK keyboard

[w.p.richardson]

Some would argue that a Dvorak keyboard is an improvement over QWERTY. Why hasn't it taken over? Simple - there is no real cry for an improvement.

This idea is akin to changing the steering wheel in a car to a joystick; possible, but why change something that is a functional standard?

Re:DVORAK keyboard

[gilesjuk]

There's a proper reason for having a steering wheel in a car and that is accuracy and usability. You have to turn the wheel quite a large distance to go from full lock left to full lock right. With a joystick it would be a foot at the most.

Other reasons include feedback, you simply wouldn't get the right feedback from a joystick. A stick is ideal for a plane as you are banking the plane towards the left and to the right, in a car you are rotating the wheel and so a rotating control method works best.

Also, to use a stick you would need control systems, fully powered hydraulic steering, this would be prone to faults and in the event of a system failure you would lose steering. Currently cars have power assisted steering but standard steering still functions in the event of a fluid leak etc.

Other problems with a stick system? how about requiring the engine to be running for the system to work? this would make getting your car onto a recovery truck rather difficult if the engine won't run. What about getting towed? impossible without the engine running.

So while it might be possible to change cars to use a joystick it is simply a bad idea.

Re:DVORAK keyboard

[Cska Sofia]

Some would argue Mac OS X is an improvement over Windows. Why hasn't it taken over?

Just because a technology is established across the vast majority of users doesn't mean that alternatives wouldn't be a great improvement. QWERTY is so firmly established that despite the common knowledge that it was designed to put common letter combinations as far apart as possible, most users do not even consider looking for an alternative. There are many reasons - lack of knowledge, lack of learning resources, cost - but don't think that, all else being equal, users wouldn't pick the alternative that is designed for the greatest speed, comfort and accuracy.

Re:DVORAK keyboard

[the pickle]

Let me preface this with "I think a joystick is a horrible way to drive a car" and "Change for the sake of change is almost always bad." So in principle, I agree with the spirit of your comment.

A stick is ideal for a plane as you are banking the plane towards the left and to the right, in a car you are rotating the wheel and so a rotating control method works best.

Uh, what? This reasoning sounds awfully circular (honestly, no pun intended) to me. There are plenty of planes that use a wheel instead of a stick. The main reason for using a stick with an aircraft is that a wheel doesn't easily (or as conveniently, anyway) lend itself to motion in a third axis. Using a stick removes a lot of that awkwardness.

Also, to use a stick you would need control systems, fully powered hydraulic steering...

There are plenty of planes that don't have hydraulic systems associated with a control stick, and there are a lot more that have systems no more complicated than what's in a car. There's no reason a hydraulic-assist stick, much like today's power steering, couldn't be developed for use in a car.

I can almost guarantee you that helicopter (and maybe fighter) pilots would be the only people who would be able to drive such a system with any sort of precision, though. Your point about having to turn a steering wheel a very large distance to effect a fairly small change is a good one. Without some sort of serious speed sensitivity, the smaller range of control input inherent in a stick would make for VERY lively steering (read: easily overcontrolled).

Of course, if cars had *always* had a joystick-type steering mechanism (some early ones did, in fact), we'd be sitting here having this discussion from the opposite perspective. There's really nothing inherent in a steering wheel that makes it the perfect solution to steering a car. It's more a matter of "what's always been done."

To get this back on topic, there's really nothing inherently superior about a QWERTY keyboard, and many arguments can be made that there are inherently inferior aspects of it. The problem is, QWERTY layouts have been in use for so long that they're the de facto standard, no matter what other great technology comes along. QWERTY keyboards will rule the world until either voice recognition or direct brain control is perfected.

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