Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!ephemeral.ai.toronto.edu!bradb
From: bradb@ai.toronto.edu (Brad Brown)
Subject: Re: Human Factors: Paper-Like Interface
Message-ID: <88Dec21.210609est.10760@ephemeral.ai.toronto.edu>
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
References: <2690003@hpdsla.HP.COM> <88Dec10.134912est.10521@ephemeral.ai.toronto.edu> <2442@ficc.uu.net> <88Dec14.210656est.10862@ephemeral.ai.toronto.edu> <314@cui.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 21 Dec 88 21:06:00 EST

In article <314@cui.UUCP> bertrand@cui.UUCP (IBRAHIM Bertrand) writes:

[... stuff about how drawing text with a stylus is not fun, how
     touch-sensitive input systems should have a keyboard as
     well, and how evil it would be to simulate a keyboard on
     the display ...]

>Here, at the University of Geneva, we have built more than 15 years ago such 
>an interface based on a plasma display and an infrared "touch panel". The 
>display was square (about 8 inches sides) with 512x512 pixels and the input
>device had a resolution of 160x160. Any opaque object could be used to point
>to the screen (including a finger) and the position could be sampled 50 times
>per second, allowing a complete tracking of the movements of the finger.
>
>The equipment had also a regular keyboard attached to it....
>
>For graphic intensive applications like graphic editors where you had very 
>little text to enter but mainly free hand drawing or rubberbanding, we used a 
>simulated keyboard drawn at the bottom of the screen. Typing was not very
>fast (about two characters per second) but acceptable.
>
>An interresting consequence of the tight coupling of the input and output 
>devices was the disappearence of the notion of cursor (for graphics). The 
>finger WAS the cursor. Another interesting point was also the use we made
>of the finger up <-> finger down transitions to build a more user friendly
>interface.

This is the kind of thing that I was thinking of when I started the
complaints about keyboardless systems.  My concern was that machines
like the new Wang thing or IBMs new offering would be 'sexy' but not
fun to use after the first hour or so for people who need to do a lot
of work with text.  Adding a keyboard and integrating it into the system
is the best idea.

Further ideas:  Several years ago HP had a version of one of their IBM PC
compatable micros (HP-150?) that had a sort-of-touch-sensitive display.
In the moulding around the display were two rows, one vertical and one
horizontal, of IR LEDs with receptors.  Software could read the state of
some circuits that told them whether anything was blocking any of the
diodes, and if so where on the screen the object was put.  That meant
that cursor movement in, say, a word processor, could be handled by
touching the text location on the screen with a pencil.  (HP supplied
a version of WordStar that implemented this.)  Function keys could be
drawn anywhere on the screen, with any contents, and activated by touching.
The device could resolve what line you were pointing at (25 line display)
and could resolve down to two characters in the horizontal direction.
(I think...)  The machine was very nice, but innovative hardware dies
fast when it tries to compete in the lowest-common-denominator IBM PC
world, and this machine never cought on.

Allong the same lines, Steve Ciarcia did a column in Byte a few years
ago describing a home-brew version of the same thing.  I think he was
the consulting engineer who designed the HP part, but I can't prove it.

Lastly, major shopping malls have touch-sensitive information kiosks
that show little commercials on a display and let you pick from menus
of store information.  I have seen similar ideas in trade shows.

What *I* would like to see is a flat-panel display that I could sit
on my desk at a slight angle behind a detached keyboard.  I would like
my computer to run a major windowing system (SunOS, X, whatever) and
be able to perform "mouse" operations by running my finger over the
display.  That makes my machine compatable with existing software and
still lets me take advantage of the touch-sensitive input.  Then I
can enjoy all these new features while I wait for the idea to catch
on and spawn lots of nice software that really takes advantage of it.
;-).

					(-:  Brad Brown  :-)
					bradb@ai.toronto.edu
					bradb@ai.utoronto.ca