Man Campaigns For Addition of 'Th' Key To Keyboard

beaverdownunder writes "Melbourne restauranteur Paul Mathis has developed a one-character replacement for the word 'The' – effectively an upper-case 'T' and a lower-case 'h' bunched together so they share the upright stem – and an app that puts it in everyone's hand by allowing users to download an entirely new keyboard complete not just with his 'Th' symbol, but also a row of keys containing the 10 or 15 (depending on the version) most frequently typed words in English. Mathis has already copped criticism from people who claim he is attempting to trademark a symbol that is part of the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet (pronounced 'tshe,' the letter represents the 'ch' sound found in the word 'chew')."

Comments

Petition for "Sh" key soon to follow...

[Anonymous Coward]

...

Re:Petition for "Sh" key soon to follow...

[Anonymous Coward]

With the "it" soon to follow too. Only two keystrokes necessary to express your feelings.

Re:Petition for "Sh" key soon to follow...

[Hognoxious]

http://www.steevven1.com/images/geek_keyboard.jpg

No

[mmcxii]

What teh hell is his problem? We don't need anotehr key on out keyboards.

Re:No

[elfprince13]

Not only at, but we already have two letters to solve ðis problem (although it would help if /. didn't delete the first one).

Re:No

[Hans Adler]

You abused it anyway. Thorn is not for the sound in 'that' (which is the same as the sound in 'this'), but for the one in 'with'. Just think about whether someone with a heavy accent would replace th by d or by f. ('dis' and 'dat' require an ed, 'wif' requires a forn).

Re:No

[elfprince13]

A thorn can be either a voiced or voiceless dental fricative, even if modern Icelandic orthography only uses it for the former.

Re:No

[MickLinux]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure he wrote this with an edh, which is the correct usage. Thorn, I thought , looked like a combination between "b" and"p".

Re:No

[elfprince13]

My "at" was actually a "that" with a thorn, which was stripped by /.'s filters. But that is also correct usage if you're an English speaker instead of Icelandic.

Re:No

[gutnor]

voiceless dental fricative

Tell me you won a bet with that.

Re:No

[RabidReindeer]

A thorn can be either a voiced or voiceless dental fricative, even if modern Icelandic orthography only uses it for the former.

Thorn was the original initial spelling for the English word now spelled "the". The "ye Olde Time Shoppe" signs are a reflection of the period when English typesetters were using "y" to represent thorn because they were using Continental fonts from countries like Germany, where the "th" is completely foreign.

Bring back e thorn!

Re:No

[Bacon Bits]

No, he looked at GGP's broken link and saw what it was supposed to be pointing to. Then he read the article:

[The thorn letter] has the sound of either a voiceless dental fricative, like th as in the English word thick, or a voiced dental fricative, like th as in the English word the. Modern Icelandic usage generally excludes the latter, which is instead represented with the letter eth; [...]

Like all modern trivia, it was learned on an arbitrarily hyper-specific wiki entry.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

u can just abbreviate t words

Re:No

[flyneye]

I want to add punctuation for common conversational occurrences and sentiments that happen in real life without a written counterpart. Most could be drafted from programming symbols and could be used formally where emoticons are inappropriate. It be a paridigm change in literature, like 3D IMAX w/ DOLBY v.(?) is for cinema. Imagine being able to read the following and more into your usual intake. St-s-st-stuttering, for example already has sufficient representation, but, what about:
1. belching
2.farting
3.accidentally spitting during plosives P T and S consonants.
4.sneezing
5.coughing
6. twitching eye.
7.bad breath (could use reverse italics)
8. sarcasm (use backwards font)
9. nose picking
10. sweating
11. glazed droning indifference
12. hiccoughing
13. whispering (which may use ( and ), but also denotes soliloquy, therefore we need an extra small lower case to denote whispering.Extra small uppercase, need not be included as all lower,lowercase facilitates the feel of a whisper)
14. others not thought of yet...

Re:No

[flyneye]

Tell me you won a game show with that.

Re:No

[flyneye]

Cool, we've just invented Trivial Pursuit, Wikipedia Edition. Just in time for the obligatory 80s retrospective trend. Hold on to your mullets, maybe even the /. Edition.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is abbreviation such a long word? Ever thought about that?

Re:No

[gl4ss]

A thorn can be either a voiced or voiceless dental fricative, even if modern Icelandic orthography only uses it for the former.

Thorn was the original initial spelling for the English word now spelled "the". The "ye Olde Time Shoppe" signs are a reflection of the period when English typesetters were using "y" to represent thorn because they were using Continental fonts from countries like Germany, where the "th" is completely foreign.

Bring back e thorn!

so.. what you're saying is that YARR! is actually THARRRR?

shiver mi timbers

Re:No

[kermidge]

Not until you asked. Tnx, I think.

Re:No

[arglebargle_xiv]

I wath wondering when thomeone would bring up eth. It uthed to be part of the Englith alphabet, but then thome bunch of wootheth removed it. Thiththieth!

Re:No

[Reziac]

I actually use the thorn in my everyday handwriting. It's easier to write than th, at least if you have degenerative handwriting disorder.

Re:No

[lsatenstein]

===
The qwerty keyboard has its layout from the Remington, Underwood and other mechanical typewriters. If the more frequently used keys were always on the home position, with those machines you would end up in mid-air collision with two keys, as one is returning and one is going up to hit.

I think that with electronic keyboards, we could use some optimisation in this area. In fact, we could use a few new characters such as the Euro, Rupee or Yen symbols as well as the and $. Oh, I forgot, my US keyboard layout does not have the symbol, but it seems to have others. € appears on a new USA keyboard layout where the currently is placed.

Re:No

[RivenAleem]

THARRR she blows!

Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[cribera]

Seriously, I still fail to understand why the Qwerty keyboard still is the norm, even in virtual keyboard in mobile devices. What's the problem with pushing a better keyboard like Dvorak? wouldn't that be a better improvement over just adding 'th' or other minor fixes?

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[CastrTroy]

For most people, it's not the layout of the keyboard that's slowing them down, but rather the lack of effort in trying to learn proper typing techniques. You could probably put the keyboard in the worst possible configuration ever, with all Q,Z, V, and X all in the home row, and people could still learn to type sufficiently fast on it.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[tnk1]

I'd say that it is because most people could not care less and QWERTY is status quo. QWERTY will have to cause cancer before anyone cares enough to change it. That or someone with a burning desire to push Dvorak gets their hands on a lot of power.

On the bright side, no one is going to start using this change either. As other posters have pointed out, we used to have the Thorn character, and there's a reason we don't anymore.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[AuMatar]

Because there isn't definitive proof dvorak is faster even for physical keyboards (studies differ on if there's any gain), much less for 1-2 finger tap keyboards like on a phone. Because the world is used to qwerty and the costs of retraining in dvorak dwarf the lifetime gain of dvorak, if there actually is any. Because the fastest method of input on phones so far is to actually not type at all, but use a Swype-like mechanism and/or heavy prediction, which actually work worse with a dvorak keyboard.

I don't really think this is a huge gain either, but the Dvorak as second coming thing annoys the hell out of me.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[rsierpe]

ok, just to start from the very beginning: What is oh so better in dvorak? my qwerty serves me just fine.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Trepidity]

It's probably easy to learn, but if you want to maximize input speed, this guy sort of has the right idea, that consolidating common inputs into single units is the way to go to speed up entry. However stenographers have already come up with much more complete stenotype systems, used mainly by court reporters. The downside is that it's a bit esoteric to learn, moreso than Dvorak.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[serviscope_minor]

QWERTY will have to cause cancer before anyone cares enough to change it

Yeah, but cancer is a vague threat at some point in the future. I need to get work done NOW, so I'm sticking with it.

IOW even the threat of cancer won't get people to change :)

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it is familiar and ubiquitous and for most people the time needed to relearn a keyboard simply isn't worth the investment.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

And the stenotype isn't trademarked, patented or copyrighted, so I'm REALLY at a loss as to why this bozo should get protection for "A keyboard with some keys that include a phoneme".

An app that turned the keyboard into stenotype, if it doesn't exist yet, would be brilliant for the market that needs tast dictation and is being blinged up to show the executive's e-peen. But it wouldn't get a patent on the application of stenotype to keypad entry, just copyright on the application code.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Russ1642]

Forget about faster. It's easier and more comfortable.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Mashiki]

It's a mileage may vary type of thing, much like many other things in life. For me, I was at 110-150wpm error free back a few years ago. I switched over to dvorak, and was easily hitting 200wpm error free. Now a days(after I broke my back), due to poor muscle control and poor sense of touch, it doesn't matter too much. But I do find dvorak easier to type on and less of a strain especially when I'm having muscle weakness.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, I still fail to understand why the Qwerty keyboard still is the norm, even in virtual keyboard in mobile devices.

What's the problem with pushing a better keyboard like Dvorak? wouldn't that be a better improvement over just adding 'th' or other minor fixes?

Because the original studies were biased at best, and follow up studies found there are no cost benefits to retraining with Dvorak:

In the first phase of the experiment, 10 government typists were retrained on the Dvorak keyboard. It took well over 25 days of four-hour-a-day training for these typists to catch up to their old QWERTY speeds. (Compare this to the Navy study's results.) When the typists had finally caught up to their old speeds, the second phase of the experiment began. The newly trained Dvorak typists continued training and a group of 10 QWERTY typists (matched in skill to the Dvorak typists) began a parallel program to improve their skills. In this second phase the Dvorak typists progressed less quickly with further Dvorak training than did QWERTY typists training on QWERTY keyboards. Thus Strong concluded that Dvorak training would never be able to amortize its costs. He recommended instead that the government provide further training in the QWERTY keyboard for QWERTY typists.

The GSA study attempted to control carefully for the abilities and treatments of the two groups. The study design directly paralleled the decision that a real firm or a real government agency might face: Is it worthwhile to retrain its present typists? If Strong's study is correct, it is not efficient for current typists to switch to Dvorak. The study also implied that the eventual typing speed would be greater with QWERTY than with Dvorak, although this conclusion was not emphasized.

Much of the other evidence that has been used to support Dvorak's superiority actually can be used to make a case against Dvorak. We have the 1953 Australian Post Office study already mentioned, which needed to remove psychological impediments to superior performance. A 1973 study based on six typists at Western Electric found that after 104 hours of training on Dvorak, typists were 2.6 percent faster than they had been on QWERTY. Similarly, a 1978 study at Oregon State University indicated that after 100 hours of training, typists were up to 97.6 percent of their old QWERTY speed. Both of these retraining times are similar to those reported by Strong but not to those in the Navy study. But unlike Strong's study neither of these studies included parallel retraining on QWERTY keyboards. As Strong points out, even experienced QWERTY typists increase their speed on QWERTY if they are given additional training.

Ergonomic studies also confirm that the advantages of Dvorak are either small or nonexistent. For example, A. Miller and J Thomas, two researchers at the IBM Research Laboratory, writing in the International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, conclude that "no alternative has shown a realistically significant advantage over the QWERTY for general purpose typing." Other studies based on analysis of hand-and-finger motions find differences of only a few percentage points between Dvorak and QWERTY. The consistent finding in ergonomic studies is that the results imply no clear advantage for Dvorak, and certainly no advantage of the magnitude that is so often claimed.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[jellomizer]

Perhaps we really need to completely rethink the Keyboard process, as a means of input.
Qwerty is the norm, is because that is what they typewriters have been Query, there have been countless classes teaching people how to type on A Qwerty Keyboard. So when computers came out they stuck with it. Dvorak, while may offer some speed advantage not as much as people think. Perhaps in the world of touch screens we need to rethink user input and drop the Keyboard and replace it with something new. I do like the concept that Dasher has, as well other more abdaptive tequniques.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell them QUERTY keyboards emit dangerous radiation. Then they'll switch to Dvorak in a heartbeat. :-)

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Merk42]

To GP's point, is there any definite proof dvorak is 'easier and more comfortable'?

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can stick Dvorak right up your ass....

Dvorak is though to be better than qwerty, but like ASCII, the stupid americans can't see beyond their borders (again (unless there's oil and you should attack it)).... is Dvorak better in any other written language than English ... probably not!

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[lxs]

For the same reason the RPN calculators aren't widespread. Once your muscle memory knows one system it's extremely frustrating to have to switch to a different system.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

200wpm? Bullshit,.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Goaway]

The comfort comes from that comfortable feeling that you are special and better than everyone else because you use a special keyboard.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[datavirtue]

I've been spelling "with the" as "withe" when writing by hand for some reason.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[SuricouRaven]

Qwerty was designed to be optimal for mechanical typewriters. The claim that it was designed to slow typing down to prevent jams is only half-true - it's actually designed so that the most commonly used letter combinations were kept apart but still typed with one hand, to minimise the possibility of two keys at once being pressed and jamming the mechanism. The non-grid, staggered rows feature is another mechanical relic, to allow the link bars from the lower rows to pass between the bars for those above.

While alternative layouts designed to ignore mechanical limitations may allow for faster typing in theory, the gain isn't really great, and applies only to skilled typists. The view of most is that even if qwerty isn't ideal, it's close-enough that the costs of switching to a new layout are not justified for such marginal gains.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[datavirtue]

I got a job offer last week and as part of my salary negotiations I demanded Dvorak keyboards. I still haven't heard back.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

I got that keyboard in 1984 anyways. It included all the English words I knew at the time. GOTO, GOSUB, IF, PEEK, POKE, PRINT, RANDOMIZE, ...
People these days have trouble spelling typedef or intptr_t, I wish they sold rubber keyboards for that.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

The solution to that problem is to make playing The Typing of the Dead mandatory in elementary school.
Edutational Zombie Arcade Touchtyping Shooters is probably one of my favorite genres.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's probably easy to learn, but if you want to maximize input speed, this guy sort of has the right idea, that consolidating common inputs into single units is the way to go to speed up entry. However stenographers have already come up with much more complete stenotype systems, used mainly by court reporters. The downside is that it's a bit esoteric to learn, moreso than Dvorak.

Character combinations that are common in one language may be very rare or nonexistent in another language. So if you mess too much with a keyboard layout to satisfy a specific language's requirements, you end up with different keyboards for different countries, or even within one same country (Switzerland for instance). Granted, some personalization is in fact done today with QWERTY keyboards incorporating special characters for certain regions, but the basic layout is the same, so if you are an Englishman going to work in Germany, it won't be too hard to adapt.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, my hands used to hurt when typing really fast in qwerty, but then i switched to dvorak

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[RabidReindeer]

I've never been that keen on Dvorak, either. A truly fast English keyboard's home row ought to look something like:

"andoftheinm"

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that's one way to get to stay on unemployment.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Mashiki]

200wpm? Bullshit,.

Aww. Anonymous troll butthurt that people can type quickly. Useful tip: The best typers w/o errors can easily hit 300-350wpm.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[cellocgw]

I got a job offer last week and as part of my salary negotiations I demanded Dvorak keyboards. I still haven't heard back

Is this some sort of in-joke? software remaps for Dvorak are everywhere. If you need the keys themselves printed with the Dvorak characterset, then you haven't learned to touch-type in the first place.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Joce640k]

Seriously, I still fail to understand why the Qwerty keyboard still is the norm, even in virtual keyboard in mobile devices.

What's the problem with pushing a better keyboard like Dvorak?

Mainly because it isn't better.

In real tests, all the 'benefits' turn out to be placebo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard#Controversy

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

For most people, it's not the layout of the keyboard that's slowing them down, but rather the lack of effort in trying to learn proper typing techniques.

No I never learned proper typing techniques. Yes I type slow. What's your point? Not everything in life has to be done as fast as humanly possible. In fact, most things in life shouldn't be done as fast as humanly possible. Slow down, stop and smell your mouse once in a while.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[tnk1]

They used QWERTY keyboards in FUKUSHIMA!!! BAN THEM!

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Cenan]

but the basic layout is the same, so if you are an Englishman going to work in Germany, it won't be too hard to adapt.

That's not entirely true. The keyboard I use right now is a danish keyboard, with 3 extra letter keys that are local to danish. The problem is that the designers, back in the dark ages of computing, thought it wise to completely jumble the control combinations aswell (the onse to reach special characters, like slashes). This probably seemed quite smart at the time, but as a programmer I have to hit some weird combinations to achieve the same things my en-us counterparts can reach with a single key. The [ char for instance is located behind AltGr+7, lots of really common control characters in languages of the C family are two key combos for me.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[jc42]

I'd say that it is because most people could not care less and QWERTY is status quo. QWERTY will have to cause cancer before anyone cares enough to change it.

Good luck trying to change such a "standard" in a society that is still sizing its railroads to a Roman standard from 2000 years ago. ;-)

(It is interesting that Snopes doesn't actually debunk this myth. Instead, they explain why it's the reasonable outcome in a situation where there were weak reasons behind that width and no strong reasons to replace it with anything very different. So, while they explain why a lot of details you hear in the myth are dubious, the overall story is basically correct. QWERTY is just a more recent example of a similar phenomonon.)

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds ideal for all those programmers who should only have rubber keyboards.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[jc42]

Qwerty was designed to be optimal for mechanical typewriters. The claim that it was designed to slow typing down to prevent jams is only half-true - it's actually designed so that the most commonly used letter combinations were kept apart but still typed with one hand, to minimise the possibility of two keys at once being pressed and jamming the mechanism.

Except that the most common word in English ("the") alternates hands. This gives us the common "teh" mistyping, as our hands hit the 2nd and 3rd letters simultaneously, and the mechanism misinterprets the result.

(Oops; this is getting dangerously close to being back on topic. Please forgive me. ;-)

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think I could cope with the smugness, of ones, if not tens, of Dvorak users realize they haven't wasted their time learning some keyboard layout that's no better than Qwerty.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Valdrax]

As other posters have pointed out, we used to have the Thorn character, and there's a reason we don't anymore.

It isn't a very good one. We just imported our first printing press fonts from countries that didn't have it. That's a pretty terrible reason to start doubling up phonemes. It just smacks me as cheap and lazy. (And don't get me started on how we have to cram so many different vowel sounds in only 5 letters!)

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[hrimhari]

I present you... Non-US keyboards!

They do annoy the heck of me tho.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Killian35]

On an alphanumeric keyboard? I'd like a source on that one.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[abuelos84]

You mean, you took a dvorak to the knee...

I know, I know.....

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Frequency Domain]

Seriously, I still fail to understand why the Qwerty keyboard still is the norm, even in virtual keyboard in mobile devices.

Because of path dependence. Even if everybody agreed that Dvorak was so much better than Qwerty, and they don't, the transition cost of migrating to Dvorak by replacing all the hardware and software and retraining everybody is deemed not worth it. That's why it's often better to be first to market than to be technically superior -- if you can get a high enough early adoption rate your competitors will have a real uphill battle.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Agent0013]

No proof, but it feels better to me. Much of the typing alternates from hand to hand rather than some weird finger twisting contortion. Just look at common two letter combos like 'er', 'ed', and 'es'. Why should I have to reach for any vowels, which are some of the most commonly used letters? Why should a home row key be wasted on a letter that is almost never used, ";"?

But for a touch screen, where only one or two fingers are used it is stupid to use any keyboard there. I much prefer to use alternate keyboards designed for that use case. Palm's Graffiti, 8 Pen, and MessagEase are all way better than Qwerty or Dvorak on a touch screen phone. I also refuse to let the phone complete or correct words for me. I don't want names or strange words to be misinterpreted and changed by my computing device. It is a tool for my use -- I am not a tool for it's use.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[roman_mir]

well, you can always use my silly FF extension or many other keyboard layout switching tools (including the ones actually built into every OS) to type with DVORAK, who is stopping you?

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[meerling]

And they are made from GMOs
And were responsible for 9/11
And they shot Kennedy
And they instigated the Sino-Russian war.
And they voted for a presidential candidate in an election
And they ate your chocolate
And they
and ...

I can't think of any more silly excuses today, I've apparently used my entire allotment. :)

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a tool for my use -- I am not a tool for it's use.

No, you're a tool all right.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Dixie_Flatline]

Well, there's certainly proof that Dvorak reduces hand movement; because the most used letters are in the home row, there's a lot less stretching for letters that you need with weak fingers. So from that perspective, Dvorak would be both easier and more comfortable. Anecdotally, my hands are less tired and more comfortable at the end of the day.

It's not optimal--there's a group of people (you'll have to google it; I don't have a link on me) that work on alternate keyboard layouts algorithmically using genetic algorithms to find layouts that ARE more optimal.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Dixie_Flatline]

I'd submit that the biggest change that mobile keyboards need is to move letters that are similarly replaceable in words further apart.

For instance:
bit
but
bot

The three vowels are packed together. Regardless of your input method, you'll probably have to place your finger over more than one of those letters. It doesn't help to have autocorrect either, since it's just as likely to provide a valid but incorrect choice--unless the system has contextual correction. Ideally, the vowels should be as far spread apart as possible. Other similarly replaceable letters should also be moved apart. Letters that rarely replace one another (a and z, say) should be close together. I've got pretty slender fingers and I still mistype all over the place. The iPhone's autocorrect is quite good, and appears to me to autocorrect based on what side of the letter you typed (that is, it seems to be able to tell the difference between you typing on the left side of i or the right, allowing it to occasionally correctly guess between 'but' and 'bot', even if you put your finger mostly on the i) but even still, it's too easy to confuse the letters.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[PaladinAlpha]

Maybe you should have a look at the wiki page with references before making up complete bullshit.

As of 2005, writer Barbara Blackburn was the fastest alphanumerical English language typist in the world, according to The Guinness Book of World Records. Using the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard, she has maintained 150 wpm for 50 minutes, and 170 wpm for shorter periods. She has been clocked at a peak speed of 212 wpm.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[hedwards]

Because most people don't type enough to benefit from the Dvorak keyboard, and there's a shit ton of QWERTY keyboards that are already in use in countries where the Dvorak would be of use. Changing things like this can take a huge amount of effort and unless there's a definite advantage in the short term sufficient to justify it, things won't change.

The main point of the Dvorak keyboard is that it eliminates long stretches of keys pushed by the same hand and/or finger, so that you can type for longer, but if you don't type long enough for strain to be an issue, then it's not really much of an advantage.

Plus, I can personally type fast enough that I'm having to pause to make sure that I'm typing what I want to type rather than random words that pop into my head as I type.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[hedwards]

I'm pretty sure that Dvorak is more comfortable, IIRC, the lay out was based upon the frequency with which letters are used in words sequentially so as to spread the letters across both hands and limit the number of simultaneous keystrokes for different letters by the same finger.

But, in terms of ultimate comfort, unless you're typing a crapload of letters, I just don't see there being anything inherently wrong with QWERTY that would be cured with Dvorak. You still do need to use proper form to reduce the risk of repetitive use injuries.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[hedwards]

That's totally true, but it does make the process of learning to touch type easier as you can better correct yourself as you go. It's the process I went through when learning to type Pinyin with my QWERTY keyboard.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[cribera]

For most people, it's not the layout of the keyboard that's slowing them down, but rather the lack of effort in trying to learn proper typing techniques. You could probably put the keyboard in the worst possible configuration ever, with all Q,Z, V, and X all in the home row, and people could still learn to type sufficiently fast on it.

Dvorak is designed in an ergonomical way, so, trained or untrained, you'd gain comfort, not only typing speed.

Please READ http://www.bobpusateri.com/archive/2010/08/four-reasons-to-learn-the-dvorak-keyboard/ Or learn about Barbara Blackburn, the Guinness World record holder, who uses a Dvorak.

Without taking this info into account, any of the moderators could explain, what the 'insightful' part is in the former comment?

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[cribera]

Seriously, I still fail to understand why the Qwerty keyboard still is the norm, even in virtual keyboard in mobile devices.

What's the problem with pushing a better keyboard like Dvorak? wouldn't that be a better improvement over just adding 'th' or other minor fixes?

Because the original studies were biased at best, and follow up studies found there are no cost benefits to retraining with Dvorak:

In the first phase of the experiment, 10 government typists were retrained on the Dvorak keyboard. It took well over 25 days of four-hour-a-day training for these typists to catch up to their old QWERTY speeds. (Compare this to the Navy study's results.) When the typists had finally caught up to their old speeds, the second phase of the experiment began. The newly trained Dvorak typists continued training and a group of 10 QWERTY typists (matched in skill to the Dvorak typists) began a parallel program to improve their skills. In this second phase the Dvorak typists progressed less quickly with further Dvorak training than did QWERTY typists training on QWERTY keyboards. Thus Strong concluded that Dvorak training would never be able to amortize its costs. He recommended instead that the government provide further training in the QWERTY keyboard for QWERTY typists.

The GSA study attempted to control carefully for the abilities and treatments of the two groups. The study design directly paralleled the decision that a real firm or a real government agency might face: Is it worthwhile to retrain its present typists? If Strong's study is correct, it is not efficient for current typists to switch to Dvorak. The study also implied that the eventual typing speed would be greater with QWERTY than with Dvorak, although this conclusion was not emphasized.

Much of the other evidence that has been used to support Dvorak's superiority actually can be used to make a case against Dvorak. We have the 1953 Australian Post Office study already mentioned, which needed to remove psychological impediments to superior performance. A 1973 study based on six typists at Western Electric found that after 104 hours of training on Dvorak, typists were 2.6 percent faster than they had been on QWERTY. Similarly, a 1978 study at Oregon State University indicated that after 100 hours of training, typists were up to 97.6 percent of their old QWERTY speed. Both of these retraining times are similar to those reported by Strong but not to those in the Navy study. But unlike Strong's study neither of these studies included parallel retraining on QWERTY keyboards. As Strong points out, even experienced QWERTY typists increase their speed on QWERTY if they are given additional training.

Ergonomic studies also confirm that the advantages of Dvorak are either small or nonexistent. For example, A. Miller and J Thomas, two researchers at the IBM Research Laboratory, writing in the International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, conclude that "no alternative has shown a realistically significant advantage over the QWERTY for general purpose typing." Other studies based on analysis of hand-and-finger motions find differences of only a few percentage points between Dvorak and QWERTY. The consistent finding in ergonomic studies is that the results imply no clear advantage for Dvorak, and certainly no advantage of the magnitude that is so often claimed.

Tell this speech about speed to Barbara Blackburn, the fastest typist of the world, who entered the Guiness records in 2005, using a Dvorak keyboard.

Please take a time to READ THIS http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/12/09/1102182415761.html http://www.productivity501.com/michael-sampson-on-the-dvorak-keyboard/526/

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[AuMatar]

They pretty much all do the what side of the letter you typed thing, although some by different means. Yeah, the qwerty keyboard isn't ideal for an autocorrect algorithm, but its what people are used to and that's worth more than improved autocorrect performance. Also there's really no way to mathematically prove what's best- it would heavily depend on the language model of the individual user. And the average user would flip out if you started changing where keys are underneath them.

Qwerty is here to stay, as long as we speak latin derived languages. We'll have better error correction underneath and occassionally keyboard will add smiley keys or .com keys, we'll probably see more adaptations in software keyboards, and even more non-typing methods like Swype. But it'll always be on a qwerty keyboard, because that's what users expect and want.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[AuMatar]

Next time just ask for a $200 allowance for hardware, and if they ask say you're buying special ergonomic mice and keyboards for your wrists. Then you can buy the brand you want, the model you want, and there's no way they won't do it- not only would it be a stupid business decision over $200, but you have the power of OSHA on your side.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never been that keen on Dvorak, either. A truly fast English keyboard's home row ought to look something like:

"andoftheinm"

Colemak homerow: ARST DH NEIO
F is a simple up-reach of the left middle finger (where E is in QWERTY). Which I just noticed is hilarious.
M is in the same position as QWERTY for various reasons (most of the bottom row is the same, largely because of keyboard shortcuts)

I also like to point out the Wheel of Fortune letters here: RSTLNE. They are actually in that order in Colemak with L being the only reach and it being the nice, easy inside, upper reach of the right index finger (where U lives in QWERTY).

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[AuMatar]

Don't get me wrong, I used Grafitti back in the 2000s. It worked well compared to on screen keyboards of the time, due to bad resistive touchscreens. But you can't possibly think that for western languages that drawing each character by stylus is faster than tapping a button. You'd be hard pressed to do 10 wpm on one.

Now eastern languages like Chinese that don't work well on a keyboard- there a handwriting system makes more sense.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't imagine typing in Pinyin but my first attempt with typing Dvorak was to take the keycaps off of a Model-M keyboard and remapping it. Since the F and J keys had the bumps on them it was completely worthless.

I eventually just learned by not looking at the keyboard which worked rather well.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

"withe" means a horse's arse. You're a horse's arse, that's the reason.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Hognoxious]

Dvorak is designed in an ergonomical way, so, trained or untrained, you'd gain comfort, not only typing speed.

Sure, when I'm at *my* computer. I'd be fucked trying to use any other.

So I'll change when everyone else does, as will everyone else.

P.S. You don't have, to put, a comma, every third, word.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Hognoxious]

The Romans didn't use war chariots, so the story is bollocks before it makes it to the second sentence.

What's more the people who did - Celts, Persians, Egyptians got their asses kicked by the Romans, who it seems were smarter than them, Snopes and you, in no particular order.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Hognoxious]

The optimal layout will be different for each language anyway.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[kermidge]

Abrade the old bumps, use nail polish to make new ones. I suggest nail polish 'cuz it is often easily gotten, and fairly easy to remove - providing acetone doesn't mess with the key caps themselves. Use clear for looks, maybe.

This might also be a use for a 3-D printer, if finished detail were possible and one had access.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[jc42]

So you didn't bother reading the snopes article, did you? ;-)

If you had, you'd have read that the "war chariot" is basically bunk. The truth is much more prosaic: "... what traveled on roads were mostly wheeled conveyances, pulled by beasts of burden (primarily horses), carrying passengers and goods", and "Horse-drawn vehicles, whether they were chariots or carts or carriages, all served similar functions, so practical considerations (e.g., the speed at which horses could travel, the amount of weight horses could pull, the number and arrangement of horses that could be controlled by a single driver) required that they be relatively similar in size as well. "

They pretty much dismiss the usual Hollywood version of the story, while expanding on the above to explain why the ruts in early roads led to a "natural" wheel separation for horse-drawn vehicles, and builders everywhere made new vehicles to fit the ruts in existing roads, leading to a stable "gauge" that was very nearly the same everywhere.

But yeah, war chariots weren't a very important part of this. Carts carrying goods to markets were the most important part, and the norm there was carts pulled by a horse team that was two horses wide (by N horses long). That's what produced the standard-width tracks.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

...And for each subject matter, dialect, reading level, hand size...

Whether three stacked rows of keys is a good idea is even questionable.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

For most people, it's not the layout of the keyboard that's slowing them down, but rather the lack of effort in trying to learn proper typing techniques. You could probably put the keyboard in the worst possible configuration ever, with all Q,Z, V, and X all in the home row, and people could still learn to type sufficiently fast on it.

The superiority of the Dvorak keyboard was shown by people who learned to touchtype on the Dvorak. Had they been taught to touchtype on the Qwerty it would have been seen to be superior.

The answer has always been in learning proper typing techniques.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[cribera]

Dvorak is designed in an ergonomical way, so, trained or untrained, you'd gain comfort, not only typing speed.

Sure, when I'm at *my* computer. I'd be fucked trying to use any other.

So I'll change when everyone else does, as will everyone else.

P.S. You don't have, to put, a comma, every third, word.

That's exaxtly my point was about promoting the dvorak keyboard. If you tread the OP, the whole thread is about to change a STANDARD, if you are promoting to change a standard , keeping the ugly qwerty layout, why not promoting the change, to switch the standar to Dvorak? That was my original point, so when the new standard is set, you wouldn't be bothered by changing your laptop or tablet.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[GodGell]

You're making the mistake of assuming everyone speaks your language.

They don't.

Since letter frequencies and usage differ significantly from language to language, the net result that would have is forcing a lot of people to get used to a new layout, while only benefitting a fraction of them (and disadvantaging many others).

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Hognoxious]

What you'd gain on keypresses you'd lose on finding the right key to press. As for stenotype, it's the exact opposite approach; it uses fewer keys, in combinations.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Hognoxious]

Why were people building vehicles of any kind to fit ruts in roads that had disappeared into the mud 800 years before?

Whole article is garbage.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[RivenAleem]

Or a system similar to Swype, but where the more commonly (mis)used letters are bigger than the less used ones, making it easier to hit them.

Re:Why not promote a Dvorak keyboard instead?

[Dixie_Flatline]

Actually, I'm not making that mistake per se. Keyboards for other languages already enjoy sufficient status in iOS to get their own layout. It would be ridiculous for all languages to use QWERTY as it is. I can set the keyboard layout for a french keyboard to be AZERTY, for instance.

I was only commenting on the QWERTY-English combination, it's true, but other languages have already got their own solutions.

But does it have a...

[Anonymous Coward]

"frist post!" button? Think of it! Never be put to shame by having, say, the SECOND post.

Thorn

[Dynamoo]

Thorn already exists as an obsolete form of "th". I don't think it will work it I try to enter it here, but here goes..

Re:Thorn

[jfdavis668]

Thanks. I was about to point that out.

Re:Thorn

[Black Parrot]

Also eth, for voiced "th". (I.e., "this'll" vs. "thistle".)

Or he could just use y, which is what Ye Oldfashioned Sign was all about. (Though I suspect it was used in typography rather than signs, because it would be easy enough to paint an eth or thorn even if a typesetter didn't have them.)

Re:Thorn

[SirDrinksAlot]

Maybe he thinks Ye Olde Pub is an Asian restaurant. Noodles and seafood!

Re:Thorn

[bitbucketeer]

Use the "Y" key for the thorn. Didn't you RTFW?

Re:Thorn

[Nerdfest]

I think a better goal would be to start adding to the language, to replace phonetic combinations such as Sh, Th (which existed before), and to start using more phonetically consistent letters, like "K" for the hard C sound, and C for the soft (no nore CK required). This also frees up S to be used as the SH phonem. English spelling really is ridiculous, and could use a good refactoring.

Re:Thorn

[MightyYar]

Even if there weren't already a "th" character, most texters of yore used "t" to mean "the" and it was very readable.

T quick brown fox jumps over t lazy dog.

Re:Thorn

[Anonymous Coward]

Thornography is certainly not obsolete!

Re:Thorn

[Anonymous Coward]

The "Y" in "Ye Oldfashioned Sign" is a misreading; "Y" has never represented "Th".

Re:Thorn

[BattleApple]

What makes you yink yat?

Re:Thorn

[Max Littlemore]

Y was used to substitute thorn because french typesetting didn't include thorn. Just like f was used to replace s when they ran out of esses on a page.

Re:Thorn

[BattleApple]

That's not an 'f'. It's a "long s" used in the beginning or middle of a word.
see here note the crossbar on the long s is only on the left side, and they use "s" at the end of a word. The regular "s" was only used in the middle of a word if it came directly after a long s

Re:Thorn

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, but long s is where we get the integral symbol from. Sigma for sums and Long s for integrals which can be thought of as Riemann sum with epsilon = 0.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_symbol

Re:Thorn

[panthroman]

Thorn and eth are still used in Iceland, and their keyboards have 'em.

Re:Thorn

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Thorn already exists as an obsolete form of "th". I don't think it will work it I try to enter it here, but here goes..

Ah, but his version is trademarked, and probably has considerably fewer fonts-not-designed-by-people-who-should-really-stick-to-managing-restaurants available, so why would you want to use Thorn?

Re:Thorn

[jc42]

The "Y" in "Ye Oldfashioned Sign" is a misreading; "Y" has never represented "Th".

On the contrary; it was often used exactly that way. I've recently been transcribing some historic 17th- and 18th-century music from England and Scotland, mostly dance tunes complete with dance descriptions. There are many uses of "ye", "yn", and "yr" that make no sense at all unless you understand that they were shorthand for "the", "then" and "their". Usually the 2nd letter was written as a superscript.

With those expansions, they all make complete sense in context. The typesetters were using the 2-letter forms to save space, which was often important because the page size needed to be very small to easily fit into pockets. Full-size pages would be left home, thus not available when most needed, and didn't sell well. This put strong pressure on the publishers to use a list of typographical tricks to pack the information into just one or two very small pages, and these abbreviations radically shrunk three of the very common words in such texts. (I also saw "wy" for "with", but that was rare.)

Re:Thorn

[jc42]

Thorn already exists as an obsolete form of "th".

Huh? It's not obsolete at all; it's a common letter in Icelandic spelling.

Of course, /. has its own silly English-only policy, which extends to not even allowing old-English spelling conventions when appropriate. Maybe we need to fork it and start a forum that "restricts" everything to Unicode and UTF-8. Then we could reply in Icelandic (or Mandarin or Urdu, as appropriate ;-) . I frequent a number of linguistics forums which do exactly that, mostly so that they can use IPA spellings, but they also like to use the "native" spelling for languages that have one.

Re:Thorn

[jc42]

Ah, but his version is trademarked, and probably has considerably fewer fonts-not-designed-by-people-who-should-really-stick-to-managing-restaurants available, so why would you want to use Thorn?

On this Macbook Pro, I just opened the Icelandic keyboard widget, and verified that the edh and thorn chars are there. I then switched back to my usual keyboard, U.S. Extended, popped up its keyboard widget, held down the Option key, and verified that it included both the edh (Opt-T) and thorn (Opt-T) are included. I typed them here: "Ã" "þ" to verify that they work on my screen, though I don't expect they'll both survive /.'s character-code censor. (Hmmm ... in Preview, they show as mojibake jibberish, but they're still displayed correctly in the "Comment:" input box.)

Does this mean that that Apple has pre-infringed this guy's trademark on these ancient character glyphs? My Macbook Pro is about 4 years old, but I seem to recall that the same keyboards were available on even earlier Macs. I seem to recall noticing them in Unicode listings back in the 1990s, so maybe the Unicode gang also pre-infringed his legal rights. As did the people of Iceland (and Norway) 1200 years ago or so.

The legal "IP" stuff can get rather surreal at times ...

Re:Thorn

[Black Parrot]

On the contrary; it was often used exactly that way. I've recently been transcribing some historic 17th- and 18th-century music from England and Scotland, mostly dance tunes complete with dance descriptions.

Tell us more! (Any examples on line?)

Re:Thorn

[Max Littlemore]

Yes. _and_ when they ran out of those they used an f. I have seen it with my own eyes in reprints of original artifacts.

Already Exists

[Anonymous Coward]

There already is a letter for this, it's called thorn and looks like a y. You might know it from signs that say "Ye Olde..." And such.

Re:Already Exists

[jfdavis668]

The "y" was used to represent the Thorn character, which wasn't in standard typesets.

Bah. Doesn't go far enough.

[Chris Mattern]

I insist on the return of thorn and eth to the language! If only slashdot's character support wasn't utterly broken, I could type them here...

NIH?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)

But if they did that then I couldn't spell...

[3seas]

"teh" anymore

Trademark?

[msobkow]

Fuck off, asshole. The thorn character existed long before your birth.

Re:Trademark?

[blueg3]

RTFS. The proposed character looks like a combination of T and h, but its meaning is the entire English word "the", not the sound "th".

Re:Trademark?

[Lunix Nutcase]

And the term "Subway" existed before the restaurant chain yet they have a trademark. You don't seem to actually understand how trademark law works.

Re:Trademark?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe he does understand how the law works - it doesn't.

Re:Trademark?

[IANAAC]

RTFS. The proposed character looks like a combination of T and h, but its meaning is the entire English word "the", not the sound "th".

And if that's what the submitter is after, what he's doing isn't saving any time or keystrokes or time. He still has t hit the cap key, the "t" and the "h". Three keystrokes, regardless.

In his case, incorporating T9 or something like it would probably help him more.

Re:Trademark?

[Anonymous Coward]

And the term "Subway" existed before the restaurant chain yet they have a trademark. You don't seem to actually understand how trademark law works.

Neither do you. "I want to use the term for one thing as a name for a totally different thing" is totally different from "I want to own something has been around forever."

Re:Trademark?

[Lunix Nutcase]

Except this guy isn't doing what you claim. He isn't trademarking the Old English "thorn" as in a symbol representing "Th". He is using the symbol for the entire word "the". So it is actually him using something that existed but in a new way.

Re:Trademark?

[Anonymous Coward]

no, it's one keystroke. you hit the "Th" key and get the word "the" printed.
 
He is proposing new keys that in one keystroke output common English words like "the". The symbol on this key looks like an uppercase T and lowercase h joined together, but it is one keystroke. Soft keyboards only obviosly.

I would say...

[lexx21]

That the guy needs to learn to type and not be so lazy as to balk at having to type in the letters "Th".

IPA

[Mystakaphoros]

How about we just start typing everything in International Phonetic Alphabet?

Re:IPA

[psnyder]

ay @gri wIT yu k@mplitli. @nfOrtS@n@tli, wEbsAyts layk sl{SdAt wont lEt mi tayp D@ k@rEkt k{rIkt@rz, so ay h{d tu yus SAMPA InstEd.

Re:IPA

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok Jar Jar, we get it.

Re:IPA

[Anonymous Coward]

Should be

aI @"gri wIT ju k@m"plitli. @n"fOrtS@n@tli, "wEbsaIts laIk sl{SdAt wont lEt mi taIp D@ k@"rEkt "k{rIkt@rz, so aI h{d tu juz SAMPA In"stEd.

It's a pity that I and l look the same.

Re:IPA

[Anonymous Coward]

If you weren't trying to type text-speak phonetically it wouldn't look so bad, but plus one for your propagandic technique though.

Re:IPA

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't introduce phonetic spelling into English because then you'd have to decide whose accent is the norm. For example, in most of the US, "marry," "merry," and "Mary" would have to be spelled identically while in other parts of the English-speaking world they would require three separate spellings. Even Americans couldn't agree among themselves if "pen" and "pin" are homonyms or not.

That said, you could rationalize a lot of it. For example, you could insist on "z" as the spelling of the /z/ sound and you could replace "ph" with "f" everywhere. The Spanish spelling has been upgraded periodically with great success (eg, "Christo" -> "Cristo").

Re:IPA

[RivenAleem]

Quit it Cthulhu and go back to sleep.

Thorn

[Anonymous Coward]

We already had/have a letter for 'th' he could have used instead of copping the Cyrillic, it's called a thorn. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)

"Ye" is this already

[CalRobert]

This is how we ended up with "Ye olde whatever" - "The" was a thorn with an e over it, but then English lost the thorn and people interpreted it as a y, since in blackletter it looks quite a lot like a y.

15 minutes of fame

[mschaffer]

Ok. He had his 15 minutes of fame.
Can we move on to more important things---like just about anything else?

While we're at it

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's have a separate character for every word. I'm dying to learn 30000 characters before I can use a keyboard.

Re:While we're at it

[Chris Mattern]

Say hello to the Chinese keyboard.

Re:While we're at it

[jandrese]

That has to be some sort of art project? It looks tremendously impractical for real use, although it is in what appears to be an office setting. Most everybody inputs Kanji using a more or less standard keyboard and inputting each character using multiple keystrokes.

Re:While we're at it

[turp182]

Neil Peart of Rush fame could rock that keyboard set, as long as it could turn around him while he typed...

Re:english already abandoned the thorn character

[mschaffer]

Apparently Australian restaurateurs do not do research before proposing the old and worthless.
Why stop there. How about a keyboard with a key for every commonly used group of characters?

Where's my damn schwa key?

Trademarking letters/words

[Anonymous Coward]

So some jerk is attempting to push a new keyboard symbol that he happens to be attempting to trademark. One wonders if he intends to license his new character symbol and keyboard layout to hardware manufacturers worldwide. If he can drum up enough interest by giving away free layouts to the public, he could rake in royalties for life.

I could (try to) take this seriously if it weren't for the trademark attempt.

He does not deserve a news on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

He does not deserve a news on Slashdot.
Why write about this stupid idea and even more stupid problem?

Re:He does not deserve a news on Slashdot

[jones_supa]

It's a troll article. The news is on Slashdot probably only to collect comments which brag about the stupidity of this idea.

Re:He does not deserve a news on Slashdot

[amram9999]

Agreed. His app has 1-5 installs on the Google Play Store. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.symbolapp.top15

Let's not dismiss it so easily.

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't mind a 'Th' key, as long as we get an 'OK' key and 'ing' key. It could prove extremely productive.

Re:Let's not dismiss it so easily.

[ReallyEvilCanine]

An "ing" or "tion" key would be 1000× times more productive and useful... says the guy who reprogrammed his keyboard to include: ½¼¾€®±øØ¥æÆð÷©

In reply to this gentleman...

[TCaptain]

I would like to put forward a letter of my own to this man.

y?

Re:In reply to this gentleman...

[Anonymous Coward]

I use a gesture based input system. Here is the one I use for this guy:

I am not sure which part pisses me off more. The extra useless character, or the fact that he wants to trademark it, which is an obvious scam to make money on a stupid idea.

It kind of reminds me of those idiot "businessmen" that think they have this great idea and just expect people to fall over each other in a rush to give the person bucketloads of money. I have news for Mr. Mathis: Your idea is stupid, and you are stupid.

Not T, Y

[expatriot]

It should be labeled y of course.

Unless we can have the proper thorn key http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)

Re:Not T, Y

[Xtifr]

I just press [compose] and then t and h to get thorn (and [compose], d, h to get http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eth). It's not quite as simple as having a dedicated key, but then the same could be said for å, é, ì, ø, ü, ç, ñ, æ, and so on. It's certainly not any more complicated than having to hold down shift to get a capital, which is something I, at least, tend to do whenever I start a new sentence or refer to myself. :)

"The" is so last Thursday

[kheldan]

I'd like to start a petition to include a "Teh" key on all standard keyboards, who's with me?

Re:"The" is so last Thursday

[Anonymous Coward]

Put it right next to the "Any" key :)

Re:"The" is so last Thursday

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the state of spoken English, i'd rather opt for a "fuck"-key..

Touch Typing

[Ukab the Great]

He should really campaign for touch typing literacy first. Someone having to switch back and forth between looking at their screen and their keyboard will slow them down far more than a few extra keystrokes.

Re:Touch Typing

[Tooke]

Exactly. If you can already type at 60+ WPM, the miniscule benefit that a th key would provide is laughable.

Those who forget the past...

[H0p313ss]

... are condemned to repeat it.

English evolves, as does the global use of Latin based alphabets. The current trend is towards fewer customized symbols, not more.

TL;DR Yet another asshat with more money than sense.

Re:Those who forget the past...

[Anonymous Coward]

Said the guy with numbers for vowels in his username.

Re:Those who forget the past...

[Chrisq]

The current trend is towards fewer customized symbols, not more.

Said the guy with numbers for vowels in his username.

Well he's eliminated vowels - not inconsistent with what he said!

Re:Those who forget the past...

[wvmarle]

plus the fact that most people don't even speak English to begin with - even on the Internet it may by now very well have become a minority language.

Re:Those who forget the past...

[Xtifr]

I don't know about minority, though it may come in second to Mandarin. Last I heard, though, it still had a solid lead on everything else, though Spanish and Japanese were starting to contend..

  And yes, there are plenty of people—probably, I agree, a majority—who don't speak English, but English has become a sort of international Lingua Franca (which in English means common language, even though it literally translates as French Language, just for added irony). If a Japanese tourist is trying to check into a hotel in Kenya, statistically speaking, if he can communicate at all, it's almost certainly going to be in English.

But in any case, that's irrelevant, since the topic under discussion is adding a letter to English. The reason it's silly is that English already has two letters (eth and thorn) to represent th, even if they're generally archaic/obsolete. If we really wanted a separate letter for th, we could just resurrect those instead of buying whatever nonsense this clueless fellow is offering.

We used to have "thorn": and

[ReallyEvilCanine]

Icelandic still has them. If they were really important we'd return to using them. They're not and we don't. I'm all for them (and eth, Ð/ð) but there's no need. There's a much better case to be made for a glyph to represent and/or but even the one offered doesn't flow; it's hard to distinguish from the ampersand and not easily written without multiple strokes which themselves lead to more confusion than clarification.

Reform the spelling

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.i18nguy.com/twain.html

Re:english already abandoned the thorn character

[Chris Mattern]

With that said, what the fuck is up with all of the crappy /. stories from fucking art students and other idiots who think they have a fucking clue about technology, language or anything fucking else. Seriously, this place has gone down hill. Why is this on /. at all?

Give it this, it's not as eye-watering stupid as the "encrypted" font was...

Remove X from English

[Anonymous Coward]

And while we are at it, let's please kill the X letter already, it is totally and utterly worthless.

Most times it's use is some pretentious exotic method of describing the sound Z.
Other times, it's literal use is to save typing "ks" / "cks", depending on how you view it.
Eksotic. Eksit. Much better. And it actually bloody looks more Eksotic than stupid X key does!

And fix the damn W already, it is a double-V, not double-U, damn it! Better yet, let's get rid of that mess of a letter altogether and replace it with X.

Re:Remove X from English

[Anonymous Coward]

Eksotic. Eksit. Much better.

Depends on your axxent. Some people pronounce exit as egzit, and exotic and egzotic.

Re:Remove X from English

[Anonymous Coward]

Those modifications are not worth the effort.

Re:Remove X from English

[Anonymous Coward]

It would solve the problem of people referring to OS X instead of OS X!

Can I have...

[cockroach2]

a "-1" key instead?

I need a 'pwnd' key

[GodfatherofSoul]

I'm doing so much damage in Battlefield 3 my fingers are getting tired.

Redundant

[Peter Simpson]

"The main functionality of this is in the texting space,"

...where the cool kids already use the single character "d", as in:
u c d boyz yet?

As if unicode wasn't already hard to parse

[Orphis]

Seriously, why?! Don't we have enough unicode problems already everywhere?

XML-Entity

[bickerdyke]

should be &thlig; exactly like ß (&szlig)

Wow. That guy invented ligatures!

That was the one occasion where i acutally wanted to show the code for an entity rather than the resulting char...

Re:XML-Entity

[rjstanford]

I'm just impressed that /. actually rendered a non-ascii character. Please, take one internet out of petty cash as a bonus.

Many steps ahead of that...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have 'auto correct' set to make phrases, or even sentences out of 'misspelled' keywords, so with a short 2, 3, or 4 letter 'misspelled' keyword, it auto inserts the phrase or sentence I commonly use. A few examples:

iaq = 'If you have any questions, please feel free to call or return email.'
afx = 'as displayed in Figure '
asx = 'as displayed in Slide '
txs = 'this evidence suggests'

Re:Many steps ahead of that...

[tepples]

txs = 'this evidence suggests'

This obviously wouldn't work for 6502 assembly language programmers. They think txs means initialize stack pointer.

Unifon Alphabet

[pevans]

Thirty years ago when I still thought 'hope and change' was an actual thing, I was excited to discover the Unifon alphabet. It accomplishes the goals of this guy and much more. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unifon

Dear Paul Mathis

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everyone uses english, so fuck you because if your idea catches on, we'll soon have Chinese and Indian characters added to our qwerty and azerty keyboards.

Nah ...

[rjmx]

The "Any" key would be far more useful.

Re:Nah ...

[H0p313ss]

The "Any" key would be far more useful.

I spell that as "Esc"

The title says it all

[wonkey_monkey]

Man Campaigns For Addition of 'Th' Key To Keyboard

Man. Singular.

I think "Man Seeks Free Mention Of His Restaurant In Media" might have been a better headline.

Re:Bah. Doesn't go far enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

While we're at it, can we reduce the number of spurious letters and strange pronunciations in the English alphabet? Perhaps combine them with the common digraphs. Here's a suggestion:

Make "k" take over for all hard-c sounds. Make "s" take over for all soft-c sounds. Use "c" in place of the "ch" digraph.
Make "j" take over for all soft-g sounds. Use "g" as a hard-g only.
Use "x" in place of the "sh" digraph, and shift all "x" sounds to the phonetic equivalent. ("z" for xylophone, "ks" for extra, etc.)
Make "k" take over for all q sounds, and by extension, "kw" in place of qu. Use "q" in place of the "th" digraph. (This is mostly because "q" is currently a phonically-redundant letter and could be re-used without a lot of technical fuss.)

Now that the consonants are sorted, how about some vowels?

"a" is like "at", "aa" is like "hay"
"e" is like "heavy", "ee" is like "eat"
"i" is like "if", "ii" is like "like"
"o" is like "hot", "oo" is like "boat"
"u" is like "up", "uu" is like "use"
All other vowels would be mixed combinations for other sounds, like "oi" like the sound in "toy".

This would make spelling a non-issue for most people, since it wouldn't require memorization of a ridiculous number of special cases and strange exceptions.

Why doesn't he go the whole way and implement ...

[Chrisq]

A keyboard for the Initial teaching alphabet. That has not not only "th" but "ng" and others

Franklin's Phonetic Alphabet

[Bob9113]

Ben Franklin thought of the 'th' character in 1768, published in 1779 in A Scheme for a new Alphabet and a Reformed Mode of Spelling.

hmmm

[jameshofo]

Slow news day... /sigh where's all the stories of fireworks going haywire!

Already spanish piss me off...

[dargaud]

...because 'ch' breaks sorting algorithms, then don't go back to '' (thorn, which /. is likely to eat because of the lack of UTF-8).

Re:Already spanish piss me off...

[_133MHz]

As of 2010, "ch" and "ll" aren't individual letters of the Spanish alphabet anymore.
That was one big pet peeve of mine for a long time. They're digraphs, not letters!

Re:Already spanish piss me off...

[Anonymous Coward]

...because 'ch' breaks sorting algorithms

That's way outdated... 'ch' and 'll' have been treated as two characters since 1994, as explained here.

Huh?

[Tinned_Tuna]

What's þe problem? I can't see any "problem" here.

MEIHEM IN CE KLASRUM

[the eric conspiracy]

BECAUSE WE ARE STILL BEARING SOME OF THE SCARS OF OUR BRIEF SKIRMISH with II-B English, it is natural that we should be enchanted by Mr. George Bernard Shaw's current campaign for a simplified alphabet.

Obviously, as Mr. Shaw points out, English spelling is in much need of a general overhauling and streamlining. However, our own resistance to any changes requiring a large expenditure of mental effort in the near future would cause us to view with some apprehension the possibility of some day receiving a morning paper printed in-to us-Greek.

Our own plan would achieve the same end as the legislation proposed by Mr. Shaw, but in a less shocking manner, as it consists merely of an acceleration of the normal processes by which the language is continually modernized.

As a catalytic agent, we would suggest that a National Easy Language Week be proclaimed, which the President would inaugurate, outlining some short cut to concentrate on during the week, and to be adopted during the ensuing year. All school children would be given a holiday, the lost time being the equivalent of that gained by the spelling short cut.

In 1946, for example, we would urge the elimination of the soft c, for which we would substitute "s." Sertainly, such an improvement would be selebrated in all sivic-minded sircles as being suffisiently worth the trouble, and students in all sities in the land would be reseptive to- ward any change eliminating the nesessity of learning the differense be- tween the two letters.

In 1947, sinse only the hard "c" would be left, it would be possible to substitute "k" for it, both letters being pronounsed identikally. Imagine how greatly only two years of this prosess would klarify the konfusion in the minds of students. Already we would have eliminated an entire letter from the alphabet. Typewriters and linotypes, kould all be built with one less letter, and a11 the manpower and materials previously devoted to making "c's" kould be turned toward raising the national standard of living.

In the fase of so many notable improvements, it is easy to foresee that by 1948, "National Easy Language Week" would be a pronounsed sukses. All skhool tshildren would be looking forward with konsiderable exsitement to the holiday, and in a blaze of national publisity it would be announsed that the double konsonant "ph" no longer existed, and that the sound would henseforth be written "f" in all words, This would make sutsh words as "fonograf" twenty persent shorter in print.

By 1949, public interest in a fonetik alfabet kan be expekted to have inkreased to the point where a more radikal step forward kan be taken without fear of undue kritisism. We would therefore urge the elimination, at that time of al unesesary double leters, whitsh, although quite harmles, have always ben a nuisanse in the language and a desided deterent to akurate speling. Try it yourself in the next leter you write, and se if both writing and reading are not fasilitated.

With so mutsh progres already made, it might be posible in 1950 to delve further into the posibilities of fonetik speling. After due konsidera- tion of the reseption aforded the previous steps, it should be expedient by this time to spel al difthongs fonetikaly. Most students do not realize that the long "i" and "y," as in "time" and "by," are aktualy the difthong "ai," as it is writen in "aisle" and that the long "a" in "fate," is in reality the difthong "ei" as in "rein." Although perhaps not imediately aparent, the saving in taime and efort wil be tremendous when we leiter elimineite the sailent "e," as meide posible bai this last tsheinge.

For, as is wel known, the horible mes of "e's' apearing in our writen language is kaused prinsipaly bai the present nes

Re:MEIHEM IN CE KLASRUM

[Anonymous Coward]

My modern-life attention span does not enable me to read that comment completely.

Fuck off

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't need joined letters, and you can fuck off with your oe and ae as well.

While you're at it...

[Azure Flash]

Why not make a keyboard with every word in the dictionary on a key? But then people will start wanting whole sentences on single keys...

Re:Bah. Doesn't go far enough.

[dkleinsc]

Why not just use a theta?

Of course...

[Dcnjoe60]

Of course this assumes every body speaks English, too. Depending on who you listen to, we should be downloading either Spanish keyboards if in the Americas or Mandrian keyboards for everywhere else. Or maybe just leave the keyboard alone. It might be antiquated, but really, the convenience of a "Th" key over all of the muscle memory and fine motor skills involved with the QWERTY keyboard for billions of people? The Dvorak keyboard was supposed to be a better design, too, but it never caught on, eithe.

Re:Bah. Doesn't go far enough.

[danlip]

As far as I can tell from the preview, eth ( Ð ð ) comes through fine but thorn ( ) does not. Let's see how it looks once I post. But you can see them both here.

Th as always been a bad choice, it represents 2 different sounds, neither of which really sound like the combination of t and h. I support the use of eth and thorn in English.

Spelling 'sh' with integrals

[tepples]

English spelling leans diachronic, meaning that a 'c' represents an underlying 'c' in the language from which a word was borrowed. For example, 'c' is pronounced differently in "focus" and "foci", but the use of the same letter allows readers to associate the plural with the same word's singular.

Besides, you don't need to free up 's' when there's a perfectly good symbol for the sound in the middle of "fishin'" and "fission": the integral sign.

Re:Spelling 'sh' with integrals

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, who would want to normalize our language when we can just keep all of the insanity imported from 53 other languages. We can just start adding random new shapes, as that wont fuck things up even worse!

Re:Spelling 'sh' with integrals

[Anonymous Coward]

For example, 'c' is pronounced differently in "focus" and "foci"

No, it's not.

there's a perfectly good symbol for the sound in the middle of "fishin'" and "fission": the integral sign [wikipedia.org].

Wrong. Fission is Ezh.

Whatever point you were making, it was just drowned out by the fail.

It was the Germans' fault.

[Hans Adler]

As Gutenberg was German, the first printing presses only had letters as required for German. Discarding the umlauts from the printing presses imported from Germany was easy, but creating new letter types for eth and thorn was tricky. An initial workaround for eth was to use y because in certain handwritings the two looked similar. Later they used th for both eth and thorn.

Re:It was the Germans' fault.

[Anonymous Coward]

nothing to do with Gutenberg actually, more to do with Middle Norman French as written by French scribes for the rulers of England from 1160-1400+/- when the kings decided to make English the official language of England's court. The clergy were also using French, but mostly Latin. By 1100 French had diverged enough that there were significant differences--although they were most still mutually intelligible.

Keyboards. How quaint.

[PPH]

You will be using a tablet with its crippled input capabilities. Because we expect you to consume content, not produce it. On the rare occasions that we want to hear from you, you can tweet us from your cell phone. 140 characters at a time is all we want from you anyway.

Oh Please please adopt my keyboard

[kawabago]

so I can become rich on the royalties. Yeah, we'll do that for yah!

No and/or holocaust

[tepples]

There's a much better case to be made for a glyph to represent and/or

A slashed ampersand (or just "&/") might serve well to represent an "and/or": Cake, Pie, &/ Cookies

Re:No and/or holocaust

[jones_supa]

A real word would still be better. It should be made able to write a natural language completely without special symbols.

Re:No and/or holocaust

[Anonymous Coward]

or just use OR and define at the start that you'll be using uppercase logical expressions.

An APP to use one Cyrillic character?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're kidding me, right? I have never used Android, but, as it is GNU/Linux based, surely you can change the character layout in somewhere like /usr/share/kbd or whatever Android uses, right? (I know you can get a terminal emulator for it.) It should not have to be something that you have to pay a bit under $2.

This has got to just be a guy trying to get 15 minutes of fame...

Re:Bah. Doesn't go far enough.

[Chris Mattern]

Why not just use a theta?

Because we're not Greek. English letters for the English language! Also, theta doesn't represent a voiced th, as in "them", which eth handles (thorn being the voiceless th).

Re:This is retarded.

[Anonymous Coward]

Forrest Gump Fail....

Thorn is already a typographic character.

[Anonymous Coward]

which represents the Th sound. We already have a solution to the problem we don't actually have; we don't need another one.

 

Mind Read

[mynameiskhan]

Who the hell cares, the computers will one day read the mind and NSA (and Google) will know 'it' as well.

Re:Bah. Doesn't go far enough.

[JazzLad]

That has as much chance of happening as:

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.

Generally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeiniing voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x"— bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez —tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivili.

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

(Mark Twain)

We already have a perfectly good character for is

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called "thorn" (orn) and I can type e orn character perfectly well on is keyboard with "AltGr p". ere's noing new here, move along....

Buy a damn gamer keyboard

[Anonymous Coward]

And fill all the macros you want. Is plenty of programable keys.

Re:We already have a perfectly good character for

[Anonymous Coward]

(edit: would be nice if it showed up, though. Come on slashdot, support unicode properly...)

Add a dash key instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget adding extra letters; add a dash key so we can all move away from the typographically satanical "--" workaround.

And now that I've mentioned letters: put the apostrophe along with all the other letters on virtual keyboards. The apostrophe is so important in English as to almost be a 27th letter. (In fact, let's add it to the alphabet right now, between R and S.)

All starting with years of QWERTY training

[raymorris]

The studies you mentioned all started with people who were trained in QWERTY and had used it daily for many years. They discovered that several days of training (on Dvorak) part better than many years of training (on QWERTY).

For people who haven't been using QWERTY for 25 years, learning Dvorak instead likely makes sense. (Aka young people.)

Re:All starting with years of QWERTY training

[AuMatar]

That comment would make sense 20 years ago. Now? Kids start using computers at a very young age- probably by age 5. By the time they're old enough to sit through a typing class they're already used to qwerty and have a good idea where all the keys are.

Re:All starting with years of QWERTY training

[Anonymous Coward]

For people who haven't been using QWERTY for 25 years, learning Dvorak instead likely makes sense. (Aka young people.)

What are you basing this supposition on?

Yeah!

[proverbialcow]

Also, we need keys for 'sh', 'ch', 'gh', 'ing', 'ion', 'tion', 'etc', etc. This could become unwieldly, so we should probably just adopt a system of characters that covers all of the possible phonetic variations. To save time, we could have multiple characters for the same sound, which would imply certain meanings based on context.

We'd probably end up with thousands of different characters; hopefully the people who make most of our components would be able to adapt.

Meanwhile, I am still on hold

[paiute]

Tech support said to press any key and call them back. I am still searching for the any key. Maybe this fellow can add that to the list of new keys?

Thule

[Anonymous Coward]

So thule is finally coming back to the english language

C'mon editors, let's get pedantic

[Anonymous Coward]

"Melbourne restaurateur Paul Mathis..."

Fixed that for you.

Sounds like an Onion or Cracked article

[BLToday]

Didn't Cracked cover something like lost letters of the English alphabet awhile ago. I couldn't find the link. I would like a key for the Interrobang ()

Melville Dewey and phonetic spelling

[mendax]

Melville Dewey, the progenitor of librarianship in this country and the creator of the Dewey Decimal System for call numbers on books that is used throughout much of the world (including most public libraries in the English-speaking world), was an advocate for phonetic spelling. He often spelled his own name Melvil Dui. However, Dewey was kind of a harmless lunatic and, as I remember, not many took him seriously.

Honestly, can you imagine the difficulty that would be caused by having to learn how to spell words differently after having slogged through years of primary school learning how to spell them the "old-fashioned" way? It would be sort of like the revolution created by Kamal Attaturk created in Turkey by using the authority of the government to abolish the use of the Arabic alphabet for writing Turkish in favor of the Latin alphabet.

Anyway, this nut job who wants to create a whole new letter to replace an archaic one we ditched centuries ago because he's lazy should just go away and get a life.

Hey guy they are called....

[Aryden]

Ð, ð. ,

ey, at. is, us are more accurate than they, that, this, thus

Re:Hey guy they are called....

[Aryden]

Damn you slashdot for removing my THORNS!!

Re:Bah. Doesn't go far enough.

[Alomex]

If only slashdot's character support wasn't utterly broken, I could type them here...

You should have used the preview button.

[Isn't that the ISO standard Slashdot response to any suggested improvement to the message system?]

Innovative!

[Georules]

Let's go ahead and just make a key for every word! Then you don't have to spell anything at all!

Most idiotic keyboard feature ever

[Tough Love]

The most idiotic keyboard feature ever has to be Google's braindamaged committee addled decision to replace the comma key with "turn on the semifunctional voice control" on the standard Android keyboard. See why Google can't be trusted to own development on that project?

Re:Most idiotic keyboard feature ever

[zjbs14]

Not to bring down your butthurt level, but you know you can turn that off right?

Switching keyboard layouts

[Novus]

Being able to type symbols like []/\;= with single key presses is a distinct advantage of the US layout over many European layouts when programming. I actually spent a few years programming with a US layout (switching back to Finnish when typing something in e.g. Finnish), but the difference is small enough that I felt that switching back and forth is not worth the trouble. Besides, the Finnish multilingual layout works for pretty much any European language with a Latin-based alphabet.

Many people don't seem to realise that the labels on PC keyboards' key tops are purely cosmetic; in most operating systems you can switch between layouts quite easily. As long as you don't need to look at the keyboard to know which key is which, you can easily use a different layout. In other words, switching a keyboard to a more familiar layout than the one it is labelled in works quite well.

If you work with several different languages with different alphabets, you are more or less forced to switch layouts as required by the current task. For example, a Greek programmer will almost certainly spend much of their time typing program code, commands or suchlike with a US layout (or similar) and switch to their local layout to type in their own language.

It's bad enough...

[BitterOak]

It's bad enough that Adobe has been pushing that awful "Th" ligature on anyone who uses their new Adobe Originals OpenType fonts (it ruined the last Harry Potter book for me), but now someone is trying to fuse the letters even more by having them share a common stem? People need to face the fact that our alphabet has pretty much settled into a commonly accepted form (eth and thorn have been banished by all Latin based languages excepting Icelandic), and "improvements" on the alphabet aren't really welcome at this point.

Thursday.

[hendrikboom]

I've been using that symbol for decades as a hand-written abbreviation for "Thursday". Similarly for Tuesday.

That's just ugly...

[TeknoHog]

See my homepage for a better version of "Th".

no way

[Anonymous Coward]

So many keyboards should only have emoticons because so many people only use a PC for facebook or the like.

Re:Bah. Doesn't go far enough.

[Novus]

I like your idea, but I find your vowel mapping very confusing. I think diphthongs should be spelt as their component vowels. Using the IPA for English summary on Wikipedia to enumerate the necessary combinations and noting that many vowels in English only come in short or long versions (and blatantly recycling the apostrophe), I'd suggest:

"a" as in "trap", "aa" as in "palm" or "start", "ai" as in "price", "au" as in "mouth"
"e" as in "dress" or "error", "ei" as in "face"
"i" as in "kit", "ii" as in "fleece"
"o" as in "lot", "oi" as in choice, "oo" as in "thought", "ou" as in "goat"
"u" as in "foot", "uu" as in "goose"
"'" as in "a" or "comma", "''" as in "strut", "nurse" or "hurry"

Consonants are mostly straightforward. "b", "d", "f", "h", "k", "l", "m", "n", "p", "r", "s", "t", "v", "w" and "z" all have obvious values. "g" is needed for "guy", so we use "j" as in "pleasure" (hence "dj" for "jam"). "y" is as in "yes". This allows us to reuse "c" for "th" as in "father", "q" for "th" as in "thigh", "x" for "sh" (and hence "tx" for "ch"). I'm not quite happy about having to use a digraph for "ng", but that should not be much of a problem for English.

Nau, yuu mei fiil cis luks sili, and aim x''r meni wud 'grii. Cat sed, geting juusd tu taiping laik cis is not ool cat haard. Sam mait aargjuu cat cis iz not inglix eni mo'r, b't ai qingk piipl xud 'dj''st priti kwikli.

Butthurt

[WillgasM]

It wouldn't have to be used just for the "th" sound. It would also save a button when typing words like "butthurt". As I post this, the word "butthurt" has already been used twice in the comments. Think of the time we'll save.

That's no thorn

[jfengel]

ð is an "eth". A "thorn" is .

Old English used ð and more or less interchangeably. Different scribes used them differently, sometimes dependent on the position in the word. In IPA, ð is voiced (as in "this", transcribed /ðs/. (Thorn is unused).

I personally find it very confusing that "eth" is pronounced /ð/; I'd expected it to be pronounced // since in English "th" at the end of a word is generally unvoiced.

Re:That's no thorn

[jfengel]

Ah, sh**. I didn't look at the preview. Stupid habit.

Instead, I'll refer to the Wikipedia entries:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eth

so set your old phone to Dvorak for them

[raymorris]

Your point being? If you give your old tablet or phone to your five year old, set it to Dvorak first.
What has changed in the last twenty years is that 20 years ago the computer they learned on belonged to the school. Now, kids have their own devices that they can set any way they choose.

Re:so set your old phone to Dvorak for them

[AuMatar]

Yeah- nobody cares enough to do that. Dvorak is never going to happen.

Re:english already abandoned the thorn character

[colinrichardday]

Where's my damn schwa key?

No one is stressing it enough.

History truly is cyclical

[Anonymous Coward]

The english alphabet used to have a character that symbolized a "th" sound. It was called Thorn, and it looked like an upside down y. It felt out of use when the printing press was introduced and the english alphabet was switched wholesale to the germanic alphabet, at which point the y character was substituted for thorn and then replaced with "th."

Fun fact: that's why you see a signs that say things like "ye olde hatte shoppe." Besides our english ancestors having a penchant for doubling up on vowels and such, they did know that "ye" should be read as "the."

just remember

[Anonymous Coward]

it's "ukraine", not "the ukraine"

Of orn and eðða

[os2fan]

I have been using these letters since i was at high school, say early 1970s. I tried out ð too, but Modern english represents both of these by a single letter 'th'. One has ick and in, weaer or neier. It's in alphabets already, there's no need for a new rune when its been with us years. Writing "ðe" for "e" is like writing "as" as "az", and other 'newspeak' idioms.

Writing orn is pretty easy, and you get to learn to keep the ascenders on p quite short. Other than that, one gets people who get confused with is. I had a comment or three to the effect that "all of my ths come out like 'p's". I usually respond along the lines of trying to enquire about whether they were Non-English-Speaking Background or something.

The letter has existed for quite some time. A recent tome in the post 'archelogical papers', bought for yet another OE thing that most folk have long forgotten (the long hundred = counts by 120), has a church registery, with the likes of 'Richard, ye son of Peter and Mary', where ye is a form of e the capital looks something like an I, with a rod coming from the middle to 1 o'clock.

The 'polygloss as nature intended' on my website, is constructed in thorns, it's quite an 'easy read', and does not look too ugly. There are some 'th' in there, because some words have a separate t and h, eg the name Wythoff, which is Wyt (white) + hoff (yard). A simple s/th// does not work. The two polygloss pages are based on the same code, made up in a homg-growm markup. `T and `t are th becoming , 'f and `F are always , and `D `d are always Th th. This allows one to search the code for "th" and correct these on demand.

Same guy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember on the tv news before the internets was big, there was a restarauntaur who was trying to get the same Th character added to the english character set. is this the same guy with the next failure in his line of improvements to language?

Depends on the dialect

[tepples]

'c' is pronounced differently in "focus" and "foci"

No, it's not.

Depends on the dialect. In American English, it's fo-kuss vs. fo-sigh.

Fission is Ezh

Depends on the dialect. Wiktionary says both fishin and fizhin are standard.

QWERTY

[RatanGharami]

QWERTY will have to cause cancer before anyone cares enough to change it Yeah, but cancer is a vague threat at some point in the future. I need to get work done NOW, so I'm sticking with it. IOW even the threat of cancer won't get people to change :)http://bastcomputer.blogspot.com/">please visit it