Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncc!lyndon
From: lyndon@ncc.Nexus.CA (Lyndon Nerenberg)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: Inputting  8-bit characters
Summary: Chording can be *much* faster than qwerty
Message-ID: <10227@ncc.Nexus.CA>
Date: 25 May 88 05:12:53 GMT
References: <3279@enea.se> <1199@maccs.UUCP> <29826@yale-celray.yale.UUCP>
Reply-To: lyndon@ncc.UUCP (Lyndon Nerenberg)
Organization: Nexus Computing Inc.
Lines: 37

In article <29826@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> lisper-bjorn@CS.YALE.EDU (Bjorn Lisper) writes:

[ Speaking on "chording" data entry devices ... ]
>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.

It all depends on what you're typing in. An average court reporter can
handle 250+ words per minute on a steno machine (we have a couple in the
office that are certified at over 300 WPM). 

This doesn't mean they type 1500 CPM (300 words * 5 char/word). Instead,
they are entering 300 "strokes" per minute. Each stroke represents a
word (OK, I'm simplifying it a bit...), and each "key" pressed to make
up the stroke represents a single phonetic. The phonetics combine to
form "words."

So, what you really have is a moderately efficient data entry device
(the steno machine) combined with a moderately efficient "compression
engine" (the reporter).

As you can see, this system is highly optimized for english language
text, however it can be adapted to other "languages" by changing the
"compression" tables. We thought about trying a dictionary for the
C language, but C doesn't have enough unique words in the language
to make it worth while. It should work *great* with COBOL, though :-)

* Steno is a trademark of some company out there.

-- 
{alberta,utzoo,uunet}!ncc!lyndon  lyndon@Nexus.CA