Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!yale!lisper-bjorn
From: lisper-bjorn@CS.YALE.EDU (Bjorn Lisper)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: Inputting  8-bit characters
Message-ID: <29826@yale-celray.yale.UUCP>
Date: 23 May 88 17:09:38 GMT
References: <3279@enea.se> <1199@maccs.UUCP>
Sender: root@yale.UUCP
Reply-To: lisper-bjorn@CS.YALE.EDU (Bjorn Lisper)
Organization: Yale University Computer Science Dept, New Haven CT  06520-2158
Lines: 29

In article <1199@maccs.UUCP> gordan@maccs.UUCP () writes:
....
>A chord keyboard is like a piano keyboard, where each character is typed
>by holding down several keys at once.  In the short term, this has a
>longer learning curve than ordinary keyboards, but the number of
>separate characters that could be inputted would be unlimited for all
>intents and purposes (and many people learn to play piano keyboards, so
>it couldn't be all that difficult).
>
>With this single input device you could touch-type all ISO 8859
>characters, all Control-, Meta-, Control-Meta-, etc. sequences in Emacs,
>Japanese and Chinese characters, and so on, possibly even leaving one
>hand free most of the time for moving a mouse.  Typing speed would also
>probably be faster than on QWERTY keyboards, given practice.

I don't think typing speed would be faster at all, on the contrary I think
it would be slower. As all keyboard players (in music, that is) know
sequences of single notes can be played faster than sequences of chords.
This is because for single notes you can start pushing the next key with
another finger already when you're releasing the previous one.  Advanced
typists do exactly this when typing, too. When playing chords, however, you
have to lift your fingers *before* you can push the keys in the next chord,
since it is likely that you must use some fingers for both the chords. It
seems to me that the same will hold for chord keyboards.

What I say above doesn't mean that I think qwerty keyboards are the best
possible, though.

Bjorn Lisper