Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!brunix!doorknob!rsw From: rsw@cs.brown.EDU (Bob Weiner) Newsgroups: comp.human-factors Subject: Re: trackballs (&mice & pens) Message-ID: Date: 29 Jun 91 00:09:52 GMT References: <91176.152002LPARKER@auvm.american.edu> <8113@acorn.co.uk> Sender: news@brunix.UUCP Organization: Brown U. Lines: 25 In-reply-to: agodwin@acorn.co.uk's message of 28 Jun 91 17:03:45 GMT In article <8113@acorn.co.uk> agodwin@acorn.co.uk (Adrian Godwin) writes: > Are there any MicroWriter users here ? (For those who aren't familiar with > the MicroWriter / Agenda, it's a 5 or 6 key chord keyboard with mnemonic > chord shapes). > > It seems to me that such a keyboard might be integrated with a mouse or > trackball to make an single input device that both points and types. Doug Engelbart's Augmentation lab at Stanford Research Institute put together such an interface decades ago. They found it extremely efficient and it remains so today. Engelbart still uses a 5-key chord set and mouse in his work. So anyone designing a two-handed interface set like this is not doing anything novel. If you're interested in Engelbart's work, his non-profit Bootstrap Institute distributes a thick volume of hard to find classic papers for $75. If you read them, you'll learn a lot about HCI and many other topics and quite possibly fewer people will invent 'new' things that were actually invented long ago. Bootstrap Institute, 6505 Kaiser Dr, Fremont CA 94555 +1 415 713 3552 -- Bob Weiner rsw@cs.brown.edu