🚀 go-pugleaf

nukim@ndsuvax.UUCP (kyongsok kim) writes:


+   A Virinia engineer Larry Langley is developing
+a chord keyboard w/ the help of the Navy.  The kbd has 8 keys,
+4 for each hand, and each key has two positions (front and back).
+One plays one key from each hand simultaneously and we have 8 X 8 = 64
+combinations.  Karl Kroemer (working on a chording system) said,

Just a sec ... 8 keys with 2 positions each should be 2**8 = 256
combinations.  (USASCII uses 7 bits => 2**7 = 128).

Mike Khaw
-- 
ParcPlace Systems, 1550 Plymouth St., Mountain View, CA 94043	415/691-6749
Domain=khaw@parcplace.com, UUCP={uunet,sun,decwrl}!parcplace!khaw

About five or six years ago there was a gizmo on the market called the
"MicroWriter".  It had a one line 22 segment led display and a well designed
chord keyboard.  I never saw an actual device but I did get to use some
trainers on a BBC micro (they used resistor networks hooked up to the
analogue ports: what a kludge).  The keyboard had six keys (it was a one
handed keyboard) giving 64 combos.  That gave you most of the ascii set.
Other characters could be done with control sequences (one of the 64 combos
was an escape character).

The device was a commercial flop.  It was intended for notes and stuff, but
not only did the keyboard need learning but the display and functionality
was very limited.  However today we are seeing electronic personal
organisers coming on to the market.  They have tight space requirements and
hence have a small screen and smaller keys.  Could the MicroWriter concept
be about to come of age?  Two things we need:

On-line help for chords and sequences.

A chord system that becomes useful after a couple of hours practice (no
more).


Better than either would be a standard chordboard.  I taught myselft ten
fingered typing from a Pitmans manual when I started learning computers.
Best investment I ever made.  I would tomorrow switch to a chord keyboard if
there was a widespread standard.

-- 
Paul Johnson,         | `The moving finger writes, And having writ, moves on,'
GEC-Marconi Research  |                    Omar Kyham when contemplating `vi'.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The company has put a radio inside my head: it controls everything I say!

In article <696@hrc63.uucp> paj@hrc63.uucp (Mr P Johnson "Baddow") writes:
>
>About five or six years ago there was a gizmo on the market called the
>"MicroWriter".  It had a one line 22 segment led display and a well designed
>chord keyboard.... [ stuff deleted ]

  The MicroWriter was (is?) a chord-keyboard device merely by accident;
  it was designed to be an electronic note-book, to be held in one hand
  and operated with the other.  I have a vague recollection of there being
  2 unidextrous versions of it - left and righthanded.  Its weakest point
  was probably too few keys that made it impossible to use full character
  set including the interpunction marks, lower AND upper case in an uniform
  manner.  The 65 possible characters (there were 4 keys for each of the
  main digits and 2 for the thumb; the latter, when pressed together gave
  the extra code) possible with chord-pressing (as opposed to a sequence of
  escape-code plus one or more [chord] characters) were just not enough
  to generate all of the alpha characters (52 in English), the 10 digits,
  interpunction (some 6 to 8 chars) and another 6 - 9 MicroWriter-control
  codes for scrolloing the text back and forth across the one 16-character-
  line display.

  BTW: the "MicroWriter" for the BBC Micro used the same physical hardware
  though stripped to the bare-bones with no the display nor any internal
  character-decoding firmware; the software supplied with it made it
  possible to change the meaning of individual chords/ sequences by
  selective binding of incoming chord-codes to chosen ASCII codes
  (via a RAM-resident table) thus extending its usefulness somewhat.

>The device was a commercial flop.  It was intended for notes and stuff, but
>the keyboard need[ed] learning... [ stuff deleted ]

  It may have been a commercial flop, it was also held in esteem by its
  highly dedicated users.  The company (owned by an individual by the name
  of Cy Enfield) made plenty of money selling it for GBP 1700 apiece
  to various travelling salesmen & the like at a time when the nearest
  (and only!) portable writing apparatus was the Osborne 1 that weighted
  20+ kg and required a power supply.

>Could the MicroWriter concept
>be about to come of age?  Two things we need:
>
>On-line help for chords and sequences.
>
>A chord system that becomes useful after a couple of hours
>practice (no more).

  Actually - that's where MicroWriter failed - by having tried to implement
  a one-handed chord system using "visually mnemonic" key layout.  It never
  worked.  They'd have been better off with a chord system that built on
  the frequency of characters in the English language - so that the most
  frequent letters like 'e', 't' and 'shrldu' would be generated by the
  single digits (fingers) and so on... making the learnig curve less steep.

>Paul Johnson
>GEC-Marconi Research
>The company has put a radio inside my head: it controls everything I say!
                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  I want one too!
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