New Keyboard Has Just 53 Keys

Enigma5O writes to tell us The Tech Zone is reporting on a new style of keyboard with just 53 keys. Departing from the normal QWERTY keyboard setup the 'New Standard Keyboard' designed by John Parkinson measures just 12.5 inches wide x 5 inches deep x 1 inch thick and is arranged in alphabetical order. The keyboard has been designed with ergonomics in mind keeping all keys within easy reach of the home position. The only question is, will everyone be willing to relearn how to type?

Comments

Space Key

[Freexe]

They seem to have forgotten the space key?

Any keyboard without a big bar that either thumb can use to space will never take off in my book. But maybe the PDA market will like it

Ergonomic?

[ccweigle]

Um, is the "ergonomic rule" about putting commonly used keys under strong fingers only one of these "everybody knows it's true" and not a real truth? 'Cause this sucker has 4 vowels under pinkies (a, e, i under the left pinky at that). Wouldn't that be bad ergonomic design, if the finger-strength rule is real?

Re:My Theory of Keyboard Design

[Ed Avis]

80-20 rule: not all of those 146 different values you could send are used that often. A good keyboard design would be based on an analysis of what letters and keys are pressed most often (assuming we want to keep the principle of one key per letter, one key for Enter and so on) and have a kind of Huffman coding so that the most commonly used characters are quickest to type.

Programmers type characters like { } $ ( ) = + more often than the general population. It would be an awesome geek-toy to have a keyboard which promoted these characters to their own keys and relegated those useless squiggles like vowels to Shift-Ctrl combinations ;-).

Re:My Theory of Keyboard Design

[maxwell demon]

Another way to provide a medium would be to say that each letter is composed of exactly two keys pressed at the same time. That is, if you press just one key, nothing happens. This relieves you from having to press all keys at exactly the same time, and gives you n(n-1)/2 values for n keys. So for your 146 values, you'd need 18 keys (17 keys would only provide 136 values, 18 keys provide 153 values). With a keyboard of 3 rows of 6 keys each, I could even imagine that to be useable for one-handed typing. Or maybe a 4x4 pad with two larger keys below. Of course the disadvantage of that approach is that there's no easy way to label the keys, so if you don't remember a certain key combination, you cannot just look at the keyboard to find it.