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From: landauer@morocco.Sun.COM (Doug Landauer)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Chord keyboards (was Re: Optimal keyboards)
Message-ID: <142352@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 13 Sep 90 01:01:09 GMT
References: <24190@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> <1990Aug25.015334.16702@nmt.edu> <MWM.90Aug29170650@raven.pa.dec.com> <1990Aug30.005509.2877@athena.mit.edu>
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>   In other words, I am fairly certain that court reporters do NOT use chord
> keyboards of the type we are discussing.

Hmmm... I don't think that "we" are all discussing the same type
of chord keyboards.  I've seen four types mentioned:

	- SRI's (Engelbart's) ancient NLS/Augment ones, designed
	   to work in concert with the two-wheeled wooden mouse;

	- The ones that court stenographers use, which don't really
	   quite do English fast (though one could easily make
	   electronic versions of these and program them to expand that
	   particular stenoghrapher's idionsyncratic shorthand);

	- Normal keyboards, with special software ...;

	- "IBM has done some studies ..."

I think that, in spite of my previous (several months ago) posting
(which, alas, I seem to have lost), few of the readers of & posters to
comp.misc are thinking of the IBM chord keyboard described in IEEE
Computer, March 1978.

This fourteen-key one-handed baby keyboard was able to do 4407
different possible chords, averaged 2.2 characters per chord, and was
(after training) competitive with standard (QWERTY) keyboards
speedwise.  I wonder if they tried running two-handed tests, with two
of these?  I wonder how well it'd work to build one of these with a mouse
built into the bottom (the whole keyboard is only about 7cm by 14cm)?

Three requests:::

    1- Did anyone save my previous posting?  Could you e-mail me a copy?

    2- Could someone find and make me a copy of that entire article?
       (It's IEEE Computer Magazine, March 1978.  The article is by
       Nathaniel Rochester, Frank Bequaert, & Elmer Sharp.)

    3- Could someone build me a chord keyboard as described in
       that article?   :-)   free?  :-)
-- 
Doug Landauer - Sun Microsystems, Inc. - Languages - landauer@eng.sun.com
    Matt Groening on C++:  "Our language is one great salad."