Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!jarthur!nntp-server.caltech.edu!news From: marcel@cs.caltech.edu (Marcel van der Goot) Newsgroups: comp.edu Subject: Re: Efficient Keyboards Message-ID: <1990Oct15.224911.16099@nntp-server.caltech.edu> Date: 15 Oct 90 22:49:11 GMT References: Sender: news@nntp-server.caltech.edu Reply-To: marcel@cs.caltech.edu (Marcel van der Goot) Organization: California Institute of Technology (CS dept) Lines: 71 Nntp-Posting-Host: stun3e.caltech.edu In Bill Williston (freewill@nstar.UUCP) writes > A co-worker tells me that the keyboards used in the USA are less efficient > than keyboards used in the rest of the world....ON PURPOSE! Apparently, > ... That the standard QWERTY keyboard was designed to slow down the typist is well-known, and explained in some other postings. What some other posters seem to miss though, is that the optimal layout of a keyboard depends on the language you are using. The QWERTY keyboard was made slow for typing English; it might therefore, by accident, be better for other languages. The same is true of course for Dvorak's layout: I don't know whether English was the language he optimized for, but quite likely he would have found a somewhat different layout had he taken a different language as basis. (E.g., in Dutch you quite often have more than one vowel in a row, rather than vowel-consonant-vowel.) I cannot speak for the world in general, but I have some doubts about the claim in (from Bill Williston again (?)) that > Most of the world uses a more efficient layout than QUERTY. (QWERTY, I presume.) Are you sure? Where do they do that? I only know about the situation in The Netherlands (and USA), and the standard keyboard there is certainly QWERTY. There is an entirely different keyboard, called the velo-type (I think). I have no references here, so in the following please forgive me if I remember some things incorrectly. The keyboard was introduced about 6 or 7 years ago, I think the inventor is Dutch. It has only a small number of keys, on the order of 10 or 12. The typist presses several keys at the same moment (it's more "pressing" than "hitting" keys for this keyboard), resulting in several letters. There is no one-to-one correspondence between keys and letters (obviously, since there are not enough keys), but the meaning of a key depends on the other keys that are pressed concurrently. To resolve this, the keyboard has a built-in micro-processor. Disadvantages: Because there is no one-to-one correspondence, you have to study first before you can use it --- one-finger typing just won't work. I don't think that it takes longer to master it than it takes to really learn typing on a QWERTY keyboard, though. At the time, they were expensive, say about $1000 for a keyboard. As with all computer products the price will probably come down. You need a different keyboard for different languages (but as explained above, that is inherent to an "optimal" keyboard), the design of which requires substantial research. It exists in Dutch and in several other languages, probably English and German, maybe French. It is intended for typing text, not computer programs, and I'm not sure it has extra symbols like @, #, *, <, and cursor-control keys. Advantages: It is MUCH faster. Supposedly one can type at full speech-speed (what is produced is normal text, not some form of shorthand). Because the keyboard is so different, using it does not affect ones ability to use more conventional keyboards. In conclusion I'd say the investment pays off for professional typists, but not for say a computer programmer. Does anyone know about its use? Is this what they use to generate on-the-fly subtitles for the hearing-impaired on television (using teletext)? Or do they still not do that? Marcel van der Goot marcel@cs.caltech.edu P.S. Any ergonomy in the design of a computer keyboard is of course completely destroyed if you must continuously take your hand off the keyboard to move the mouse.