the 7 key keyboard/chordic thing
pks india
subject line needs to be terminate)
wayne :
"the 7 key keyboard/chordic thing has
been a failure in the market in the past, it is easy for some, but in
the
real world people share inflammation a lot by typing word processing
style
with easy to pick out letters."
actually, reduction in the number of keys
is a natural tendency.
the use of T9 method of inputting sms on
cellphones is now a 'standard'
(this doesn't need the 'chording' way for typing)
these need the chording method to type : -
1. sepo is a successful inventor of a 6 key
device which is fascinating in design-
simplicity and use .. www.gkos.net ..
check out the "Try GKOS on QWERTY"
2.dough engelbart used a 7-key device
for his mother of all demos .. still uses it !
In fact, i have halved the keys that i punch
by using only the right hand side of the
keyboard to touch type
to get the left hand side keyboard letters, i
use the same fingers of the right hand as
the fingers of the left hand BUT WITH THE
RightAlt pressed with the right hand thumb
this leaves on hand free
i can also set up things so that one can
type only with the left hand leaving the
right hand free
John Passaniti
> 2.dough engelbart used a 7-key device
> for his mother of all demos .. still uses it !
Douglas Engelbart used a five key "keyset" keyboard. The number five
was chosen because... that's how many fingers the average human has.
This was combined with a three key mouse for additional characters,
commands, and modes.
I can find no reference to him continuing to use his "keyset".
> In fact, i have halved the keys that i punch
> by using only the right hand side of the
> keyboard to touch type
foxchip
> (starting a new subject line since the earlier
> subject line needs to be terminate)
Chuck's chorded keyboard user interface was more
like things with game interfaces and like cell
phones today. Chuck wanted it to be game like.
Chuck talked about such things in the 1993 interview
video. At the time he was using PC but designing
code to also run on his target chips. Many of
the early P21 boards and code used those same
sort of game controller user interfaces.
Chuck's chorded keyboards were from when he had
no source code to enter. They were not the best
way to enter names into the name dictionary for
use with the decompiler in OK (1989-1999). They
were OK ;-) for controlling apps with a seven key
game type device input like OKAD.
Chuck has a collection on the shelf in his
"museum" and showed the piece of wood and the
rock to which he had glued contact switches
back on the 93 video interview. He complained
that the rock had way to high specific heat and
drained heat from his hand. The transcript
is also online. But it is very old stuff.
The OKAD (OK Assisted Design) application
(1989-1999) appeared on seven different
platforms leading to the 386 protected mode
and Pentium specific flavors. OKAD was used
by about a dozen people. Since Dr. Ting
sold 386 OK at Offete there may have been
more people who experimented with it way
back when. Thanks to help from John Rible
OK and OKAD moved from being completely
sourceless and got ASM source for the OKAD
code but still no source for chip layout.
By 2000 Chuck had left iTV and started work
on OKAD II. Colorforth started as a simulation
scripting language for OKAD in 1996. Chuck
decided that it was time to rewrite OKAD the
right way with Forth (colorforth) at the
bottom hosting the OS, compiler, editor,
CAD system and chip source. The first
version of colorforth was not released to
the public.
A later version was stripped of OKAD II
and released to the public, again in 2004,
and again in 2008. The 2008 version comes
with a wrapper to run in windows and access
windows stuff or boots and runs native from
a floppy. Lots of things changed from the
first release to the public releases and
other people made changes to Chuck's
early releases to make them more portable
or inspired by Chuck wrote their own versions.
By 1990 or so Chuck was using PC keyboards
and not using chorded keyboards. But he
knew qwerty was designed to be inefficient
and used his own quasi-Dvorak keyboard
setup using only 27 of the PC keyboard
keys. OK and OKAD had an odd character
set, non-ANSI, which included CAD symbols
originally. colorforth in its original
form as a simulation scripting language
in OKAD used this character set.
My second job in California was programming
computerized courtroom steno machines.
They use 27 key chorded keyboards and allow
entry at rates way beyond qwerty or dvorak
keyboards. There are two issues with PC
keyboards; the hardware and the software.
They are anything but ASCII input devices
except at an abstracted layer.
By 2000 when Chuck rewrote things with
colorforth at the bottom he used another
different character set with Shannon
encoded characters for packing them into
colorforth words. There have been changes
to the character set and assignment of
tokens in colorforth over the years so
there is no universal standard for such
things. But PC keyboard and Pentium
details got inserted into the mix along
the way.
In the 2008 colorforth release there is
a word called QWERTY. When it is yellow
it is executed and a qwerty keyboard input
is used. Words and numbers are typed in the
normal qwerty way and backspace aborts
input of a word and enter acts like space.
colorforth remains word oriented but the
user interface accepts qwerty keyboard
operation. However the block editor
still uses a key overlay that makes it
work very much like the dvorak version
A color change key in the editor cycles
colors of source words today. One can
delete a word and retype it in a different
color in older editors. If QWERTY is
white when the system boots or does a
warm restart then it is a comment and
the system defaults of the quasi-dvorak
keyboard operation. Chuck never uses
the qwerty mode but it was added so
some people would not have to make
as much of a keyboard change along with
all the changes needed to adapt to
colorforth operation.
The 2009 versions of colorforth have some
token differences, editor differences,
boot code differences, and color differences
than the 2008 version released to the
public. I covered a little of this in one
talk at SVFIG earlier this year. I don't
know if anyone will cover any of those
details at the SVFIG 2009 Forth Day
event later this month. I didn't make
any of the changes and the only ones that
effect me as an application developer and
user was blue words.
tokens were changed, a second font was
added, new colors were added, compressed
floppy format was added, and blue words
were added and made more robust. Those
are some of the changes since the last
public release in April of 2008.
Best Wishes
John Passaniti
> By 1990 or so Chuck was using PC keyboards
> and not using chorded keyboards. But he
> knew qwerty was designed to be inefficient
> and used his own quasi-Dvorak keyboard
> setup using only 27 of the PC keyboard
> keys.
It's a minor point, but it isn't correct to say that the Sholes
keyboard was "designed to be inefficient." The design was to prevent
jams while typing, which is not the same thing. Modern keyboards
obviously don't have to make mechanical arms fly towards paper, so
alternative keyboards that stress efficiency are certainly possible.
The Dvorak keyboard is certainly more efficient for what it was
designed for-- right-handed typists writing English words. I learned
how to type on both and can type a bit faster and longer without
fatigue on Dvorak keyboards. But I've also found out that changes
when I swap out a standard linear keyboard for a split keyboard. On
split keyboards, I find there isn't much difference. In other words
the physical placement of the keys on split keyboards is (at least for
me) a bigger benefit than the actual order of keys on the keyboard.
It should also be noted that keyboards designed for writing text are
also not necessarily the most efficient for programmers writing code.
Most programming languages (including Forth) sprinkle in a variety of
punctuation, usually involving larger hand motion over the keyboard
and/or shift states. YMM(oc)V.
The larger lesson here: Efficiency is not a universal absolute; it
depends on the application. An efficient keyboard for a left-handed
typist writing legal opinions in German is probably not the most
efficient keyboard for a French scientist writing a paper on nuclear
physics with hunt-and-peck is not the most efficient keyboard right-
handed programmer writing a hash algorithm in Ruby is probably not the
most efficient keyboard for a teen girl texting her mom to pick her up
from soccer practice using her thumbs.
Charles Turner
Microwriter AgendA very successfully, but that figures...
Wayne
wrote:
This is my point, how many of these have displaced the Qwerty keyboard
outside of a constrained environments like the mobile phone, where the
closer the functionality gets to a full alpha the more preferable in ease
of use. I am not trying to prove that a full qwerty keyboard is
preferable, and I am not knocking other alphas, which I may still think
are preferable to Qwerty. I am not even really talking about part alphas,
but chordic and other more complex systems that require learning and
discourage simple hunt and peck. There is also the point of difficulty of
use, such as even entering variable, location and word names in lists and
using special symbols. It is a failure, because don't matter how much and
easy we use it, it is still beyond the mass market standard and the mass
of normal people to preference or use. It is like magic numbers, some
people will be able to write in nothing but numbers, even hex or binary,
and know what each number and location means, like most of even you could
not, and they could think "what is the problem I can do it, anybody should
be able to do it", even some with one or two keys. Like most of you might
think, I know people that think like that, and it is a ignorant fantasy
that condemns to the market stone age.
As some around here, as the designers of hardware, firmware, and operating
systems, we are responsible for the lowest levels of user and developer
interaction, and even as programmers we are responsible for users
interaction and affecting the performance of the system. So, it is up to
us to design right for efficiency and (system and) user iterations. It is
no longer about us and OUR abilities it is taking the existing real time
embedded forth programming objectives of fit and efficiency, and humbly
applying them everywhere, to all aspects.
Wayne.
--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/
peekay
1. u r right .. it is a 5 chording keys device
2. i got the info and photos from valerie who
is doing the reporting of many things
connected with dough .. photos are here :
http://groups.google.com/group/Color-Forth/files
(doughEngelbart1 & doughEngelbart2)
3. matias halfkeyboard costs US$ 595 :-(
the one i developed is like their model 508
but doesn't use space+key combo
..peekay (still learning at 57 yrs)
John Passaniti
> 2. i got the info and photos from valerie who
> is doing the reporting of many things
> connected with dough .. photos are here :
> http://groups.google.com/group/Color-Forth/files
> (doughEngelbart1 & doughEngelbart2)
Doug Engelbart, like most of us as we age, might be a bit more dough-
y, but I don't think he changed his name.
Instead of taking pictures from other locations, you can just
reference the original URL you used. That way, instead of looking at
a picture from an unknown time period, we can see if it is current
ourselves.
> 3. matias halfkeyboard costs US$ 595 :-(
Yes, it is stupidly expensive. I look forward to a cheap knock-off.
peekay
hello john
the pictures are not from 'other' location(s), they are
uploaded from my hard-disk where i had saved them after
valerie Landau sent me the shots in an email
(valerie is developing a glove based chording device
on the same theory as doug's device and had dough
demonstrating her glove 'handwriter' on a tv-show
.. i got interested, interacted, and learnt a few things)
about the cheap knock-off .. the s/w i made 'Adds'
the 508 kind of layout .. i'm still trying to figure
out what price users will be okay with. their qwerty
keyboard itself will work !
peekay
>
> the pictures are not from 'other' location(s), they are
> uploaded from my hard-disk where i had saved them after
> valerie Landau sent me the shots in an email
the email to me was from Evan Schaffer dated 26th june 2009
he wrote :
"ok. here are some recent pictures of dr. engelbart (still) using the
chorded keyboard
in his office at Stanford Research ..."
included were the photographs of
<doug (still) using the chorded keyboard>
<the zoomed 5-key chording device>