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From: hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.misc,comp.sys.next,comp.sys.mac,comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: One Step... (long!)
Message-ID: <530@stag.math.lsa.umich.edu>
Date: 29 Dec 88 07:58:15 GMT
References: <263@gloom.UUCP> <908@quintus.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@math.lsa.umich.edu
Reply-To: hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu)
Organization: University of Michigan Math Dept., Ann Arbor
Lines: 41
UUCP-Path: {mailrus,umix}!um-math!hyc

In article <908@quintus.UUCP> pds@quintus.UUCP (Peter Schachte) writes:
>In article <263@gloom.UUCP> cory@gloom.UUCP (Cory Kempf) writes:
>[ long scenario of how a really nice user interface might work ]
>
>What, no voice input?  Seriously, most people can talk a lot faster
>than they can type.  I'd substitute a microphone for the (pseudo)
>keyboard.  Good speech recognition hardware can't be more than 5 or 10
>years away, can it?

Hmm.... I don't know about you, but more often than not, I'd rather
have a note pad and a pencil than anything else. It's usually pretty
difficult to get simple arithmetic done quickly on a computer keyboard,
particularly without a desk calculator type program always accessible.
You might be able to formulate an equation well enough to enunciate it
clearly, but more likely it's going to present lots of ambiguities that
a speech recognition system won't know how to handle. And, it's always
nice to be able to see things written out. (It's also kinda fun to
doodle when you're stuck somewhere, or just plain bored...)

Even when working with primarily plain text, I often find it preferable
to lay out the groundwork with paper and pencil, before committing it to
the rigidity of keyboarded text. Who knows... Maybe it's because I like
to jot stuff near the center of a page, and my text editors always force
me to start typing at line 1 column 1... I dunno. I think moving a pencil
across paper is faster than hitting an auto-repeating cursor key, or
dragging a silly mouse across a surface and clicking a button...

How about a nice, large, touch-sensitive pad hooked up to a handwriting
recognition system? Seems the perfect thing for a quick and easy input
device. (Easy to use, not easy to implement...) Although, on second
thought, a speech based system would also be very nice for boilerplate
stuff, like what is normally done by command line processors today.
("Open the pod bay doors, HAL. Copy .login to /usr/lib, HAL.") Gee,
maybe it wouldn't work so well after all. ("Egrep ay-zee-star-left-bracket-
paren-right-bracket star-dot-see, HAL.")
--
  /
 /_ , ,_.                      Howard Chu
/ /(_/(__                University of Michigan
    /           Computing Center          College of LS&A
   '              Unix Project          Information Systems