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Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing

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Re: Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing

#11

Post by janice1999 »

colgandev wrote: post #9

First of all, condolences to your friend and cool of you to look into this. Back in the day I switched to Dvorak and came across the "one handed Dvorak layout. This may be what you are referring to. I haven't tried it much but those layouts could be a temporary solution. I found Qwerty to be a lot easier to type one handed straight up because Dvorak tries to alternate hands between keys. I recently discovered Talon,…

Talon is not open source as far as I know. It's freeware with Patreon early access and support. The community plugins cover a wide range of applications and are easy to modify. I also found their Slack good for discussing accessibility options like gaze tracking. It looks like development has slowed significantly but the developer recently rewrote the core in Rust.

Re: Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing

#12

Post by DonHopkins »

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38400368

DonHopkins on Nov 24, 2023 | parent | context | favorite | on: AI is currently just glorified compression

I love David MacKay's brilliant work on the Dasher text input system, which draws deeply from his work on information theory -- imagine Dasher integrated with an IDE and code search and Copilot and language model!

"Writing is navigating in the library of all possible books." -David MacKay

We just allocate more shelf space to the more probable letters.

Why isn't Dasher built into every operating system and mobile phone?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasher_(software)

https://dasher.acecentre.net/about/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17105728

DonHopkins on May 18, 2018 | parent | context | favorite | on: Pie Menus: A 30-Year Retrospective: Take a Look an...

Dasher is fantastic, because it's based on rock solid information theory, designed by the late David MacKay. Here is the seminal Google Tech Talk about it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpOxbesRNBc

Here is a demo of using Dasher by an engineer at Google, Ada Majorek, who has ALS and uses Dasher and a Headmouse to program:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvHQ83pMLQQ

Another one of her demonstrating Dasher:

Ada Majorek Introduction - CSUN Dasher

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvsSrClBwPM

Here’s a more recent presentation about it, that tells all about the latest open source release of Dasher 5:

Dasher - CSUN 2016 - Ada Majorek and Raquel Romano

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFlkM_e-sDg

Here's the github repo:

Dasher Version 4.11

https://github.com/GNOME/dasher

>Dasher is a zooming predictive text entry system, designed for situations where keyboard input is impractical (for instance, accessibility or PDAs). It is usable with highly limited amounts of physical input while still allowing high rates of text entry.

Ada referred me to this mind bending prototype:

D@sher Prototype - An adaptive, hierarchical radial menu.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oSfEM8XpH4

>( http://www.inference.org.uk/dasher ) - a really neat way to "dive" through a menu hierarchy/, or through recursively nested options (to build words, letter by letter, swiftly). D@sher takes Dasher, and gives it a twist, making slightly better use of screen revenue.

>It also "learns" your typical useage, making more frequently selected options larger than sibling options. This makes it faster to use, each time you use it.

>More information here: http://beznesstime.blogspot.com and here: https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=960

Dasher is even a viable way to input text in VR, just by pointing your head, without a special input device!

Text Input with Oculus Rift:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFQgluUwV2U

>As part of VR development environment I'm currently writing ( https://github.com/xanxys/construct ), I've implemented dasher ( http://www.inference.org.uk/dasher ) to input text.

One important property of Dasher is that you can pre-train it on a corpus of typical text, and dynamically train it while you use it. It learns the patterns of letters and words you use often, and those become bigger and bigger targets that string together so you can select them even more quickly!

Ada Majorek has it configured to toggle between English and her native language so she can switch between writing email to her family abroad and co-workers at google.

Now think of what you could do with a version of dasher integrated with a programmer's IDE, that knew the syntax of the programming language you're using, as well as the names of all the variables and functions in scope, plus how often they're used!

I have a long term pie in the sky “grand plan” about developing a JavaScript based programmable accessibility system I call “aQuery”, like “jQuery” for accessibility. It would be a great way to deeply integrate Dasher with different input devices and applications across platforms, and make them accessible to people with limited motion, as well as users of VR and AR and mobile devices.

https://web.archive.org/web/20180826132551/http://donhopkins...

Here’s some discussion on hacker news, to which I contributed some comments about Dasher:

A History of Palm, Part 1: Before the PalmPilot (lowendmac.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12306377

Re: Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing

#13

Post by pavel_lishin »

This was ... about 20 years ago, and I don't even remember why I wanted to do this, but I found some software that let me remap the keyboard somehow - so I picked a key (probably caps lock?) that would "mirror" the standard QWERTY layout.

F would become J; S would become L, etc.

I was able to have a fairly decent input speed.

I wish I remembered why I did this. I think I had some tedious task that I couldn't figure out how to automate, that required me to have one hand on the mouse[1] most of the time, and swapping between keyboard and mouse all the time got tedious enough that I invested the time.

[1] Yes, the mouse. :)

edit: Ah, someone already made the same suggestion elsewhere here! I'm glad it's a popular choice.

Re: Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing

#15

Post by colgandev »

janice1999 wrote: post #11
colgandev wrote: post #9

First of all, condolences to your friend and cool of you to look into this. Back in the day I switched to Dvorak and came across the "one handed Dvorak layout. This may be what you are referring to. I haven't tried it much but those layouts could be a temporary solution. I found Qwerty to be a lot easier to type one handed straight up because Dvorak tries to alternate hands between keys. I recently discovered Talon,…

Talon is not open source as far as I know. It's freeware with Patreon early access and support. The community plugins cover a wide range of applications and are easy to modify. I also found their Slack good for discussing accessibility options like gaze tracking. It looks like development has slowed significantly but the developer recently rewrote the core in Rust.

Ah, that's my mistake, thanks!

Re: Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing

#16

Post by add-sub-mul-div »

I've used Talon for voice and AutoHotKey for mapping the caps lock key as a mouse click. But beware, suddenly using the non dominant side much more to compensate can cause issues. I probably needed some proactive physical therapy or strengthening on the non injured side.

Re: Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing

#17

Post by rowla »

One-handed typer here – well, one hand and one finger, and it’s been like this for all my life. Your friend may want to consider text macro tools such as Keyboard Maestro for macOS. There are many others, but KM will also launch apps and do other magic for me just by typing two or three letters. Create a list of frequently used words or segments, define a generic expansion key (in my case #) that doesn’t require a modifier. I have more than 1000 of these macros, and it really helps with all those long words in my native German. Dictation may also help, although I find that it leads my thoughts in different directions when I see words appear on the screen as I speak.

Re: Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing

#19

Post by jankins »

When I broke my collarbone on my dominant arm I learned Dvorak left-handed layout a QMK keyboard. I configured some layers to make all the symbols needed for programming easy to access, and hold-space-for-shift. I learned the layout using Epistory, a typing game. There’s several similar games now that look helpful. It was slower but workable.
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