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From: conte@crest.csg.uiuc.edu (Tom Conte)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: Sony Palmtop w/char recognition - Ultimate Laptop?
Message-ID: <1990Apr11.060139.1330@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 11 Apr 90 06:01:39 GMT
References: <18720@boulder.Colorado.EDU> <1463@uvm-gen.UUCP> <19307@boulder.Colorado.EDU> <54020@microsoft.UUCP> <3223@moondance.cs.uq.oz.au>
Sender: usenet@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (News)
Reply-To: conte@crest.csg.uiuc.edu (Tom Conte)
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Lines: 48

In article <3223@moondance.cs.uq.oz.au> you write:
> garye@microsoft.UUCP (Gary ERICSON) writes:
> 
> >>Not to mention the even larger marketplace of poor typists throughout
> >>the world!
> 
> >...  And then, of course, the
> >handwriting interface is pushed off in some specialized corner because, of
> >course, typing is much more efficient than writing by hand.
> 
> ...
> This handwriting interface is going to put keyboards back in the typing pool
> where they belong.
> 

Oh, I am afraid I disagree.  My handwriting speed is considerably slower
than my typing speed.  There're several explanations for this: the brain
has to perform a more complex set of motions per letter for handwriting 
than for typing, and the amount of physical work (watts) for pressing a
key is less than that for writing by hand (barring poorly-designed key-
boards).  Another reason is the error in processing of a keystrike is
much less dependent on transmission (input) speed than handwriting, since
handwriting quality tends to degrade with speed.  (I would expect using
the Sony to be painful-- we just don't have the skill to decode handwriting
perfectly in real-time.)

The Dvorak keyboard was supposed to solve the speed problem of the QWERTY
keyboard layout [the QWERTY keyboard was designed to *slow* *down* typing
speed, as the first typewriters were mechanical and would jam at high speeds
-- at least the way I heard it, if this is a myth, let me know].  The
Dvorak never caught on.  It wasn't that much of an improvement in speed
to justify the learning time needed.  I predict that the situation for
handwriting interfaces will not be popular for the above reason: no increase
(in fact a decrease) in speed.  Note this is not true if the user is writing
in Japanese.  Sony will have success selling this in Japan, but it I predict
no success to latin-aphabet language users.

Other input devices will come.  The mouse was an experimental toy until
Smalltalk and the Alto, and eventually the Lisa/Macintosh put it on all of
our desks.  The five-key chorded keyboard never made it outside Xerox PARC,
sadly.  The `glove' is coming.

Some day, the implant.


------
Tom Conte	  Center for Reliable and High-Performance Computing
 conte@uiuc.edu   University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois