Slashdot Mirror
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')."
What teh hell is his problem? We don't need anotehr key on out keyboards.
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..
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
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...
Fuck off, asshole. The thorn character existed long before your birth.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
That the guy needs to learn to type and not be so lazy as to balk at having to type in the letters "Th".
How about we just start typing everything in International Phonetic Alphabet?
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.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
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.
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.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
ok, just to start from the very beginning: What is oh so better in dvorak? my qwerty serves me just fine.
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.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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 :)
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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?
I would like to put forward a letter of my own to this man.
y?
"I'm not a procrastinator, I'm temporally challenged"
I'd like to start a petition to include a "Teh" key on all standard keyboards, who's with me?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
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.
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.
Say hello to the Chinese keyboard.
Seriously, why?! Don't we have enough unicode problems already everywhere?
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
The "Any" key would be far more useful.
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.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
...because 'ch' breaks sorting algorithms, then don't go back to '' (thorn, which /. is likely to eat because of the lack of UTF-8).
Non-Linux Penguins ?
What's þe problem? I can't see any "problem" here.
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
The comfort comes from that comfortable feeling that you are special and better than everyone else because you use a special keyboard.
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.
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.
I got a job offer last week and as part of my salary negotiations I demanded Dvorak keyboards. I still haven't heard back.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
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.
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.
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.
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).
It's a troll article. The news is on Slashdot probably only to collect comments which brag about the stupidity of this idea.
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)
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
They used QWERTY keyboards in FUKUSHIMA!!! BAN THEM!
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.)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
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.
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.
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.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?