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In Praise of Chorded Input

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Re: In Praise of Chorded Input

#21

Post by falcolas »

Timpy wrote: post #17
falcolas wrote: post #11

The older I get, the less I like key chording. This is particularly exacerbated by the lack of a common key chording scheme between Windows, Linux, and OSX. It becomes a mental stutter as I have to constantly override my muscle memory. It's probably why I like VIM editor schemes so much - there's significantly less chording required. I've also noticed the preference come up when playing games. Ideally, I would simply…

I don't doubt the report that Wrona is using caps lock instead of shift, but it baffles me. How did he manage to make that faster? I only use left shift, which is pretty similar except he has to hit twice as many keys to accomplish the same thing.

I've mucked around with it, so speaking only from that mucking it offers two things:

Your hand is not anchored to the shift button. You can use one finger for the first press of capslock, and another for the second, based on where the previous and next letters are (this is a reference to the typist using any finger to hit any letter).

Using shift is still three actions: for the shift button it's a press and hold followed by a timed release, plus a press of the target letter. Given this, the "press press press" rhythm matches the rest of the typing flow better than "hold press release".

Re: In Praise of Chorded Input

#22

Post by derefr »

> Chorded input is rare these days - the movement of software to touchscreen devices argues against it.

Multitouch gestures are a form of chorded input, no? And one we’ve greatly under-explored, IMHO.

Probably mostly because people tend to be using either touchscreens that are mobile, or touch pads that are rather small, and so you can only fit one hand’s worth of fingers on the digitizer, and one hand’s fingers can’t (without training) do too many different things at the same time. So mostly we come up with gestures that move some or all the fingers of the hand in concert.

But if you had a digitizer surface that had room for two hands, you could do a lot with that. Moving a finger of one hand in a circle while the other swipes toward/away from it; “unfolding” something by interlacing eight fingers in a line and sliding them to opposite ends of the digitizer; etc.

(I think Apple could easily introduce these for people who own both an iPad and a Mac. It seems their Sidecar support is already moving toward this, as it sends native touchpad input to apps—acting, in est, as a large Bluetooth multitouch digitizer—rather than just doing HLE emulation + transmission of the particular gestures possible in macOS currently.)

And sure, that all sounds a bit mystery-meat at first—no clear affordances. But it’s not any more mystery-meat than voice navigation is. Voice navigation is a “grammar” on top of regular spoken-language words; you expect the user to learn language at some point. Similarly, a “vocabulary” of multitouch gestures could all be taught to the user at some point—even practiced in an OS-shipped program resembling a typing tutor. (Back when mice first became prominent, OSes shipped with mouse-requiring games specifically to serve as mousing tutors!) Then you just have to teach the users visual/symbolic mnemonics for these gestures; and then you can use those symbols as accelerator indicators in your regular menus and label text.

(Oh, and don’t get me started on what’s possible with a depth-of-field sensing camera, ala Windows Hello. I’m constantly surprised that competition isn’t already heating up to be the first OS to natively support American Sign Language watched-gesture input.)

Re: In Praise of Chorded Input

#23

Post by falcolas »

melling wrote: post #20
falcolas wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do the same with a standard keyboard and drivers - such as plover, autohotkey, etc. 36! is a pretty large number as well. ;) This isn't an attempt to denigrate the product, it does look nice. One of my favorite chorded input methods was the old steam controller text input that combined 8 positions on the left stick with the right 4 face buttons of a standard controller. But it's design is closer to a standard…

Yes, but I don’t want to carry a standard keyboard with me. That’s why I mentioned usage with mobile devices. I’d like to sit on a park bench on a nice spring day and write my blog with my phone. Starbucks, library, picnic table, deli, ....

I would personally think that the use of joysticks would not work exceptionally well with a "park bench" scenario, but that's me. I'd probably look into the Twiddler, or one of the single-key-per-finger options myself.

Personal preference and all that. :)

Re: In Praise of Chorded Input

#25

Post by floren »

mhd wrote: post #9
floren wrote: post #5

Plan 9's acme editor uses mouse chords: select text with the left mouse button, then while holding LMB click the middle mouse button to cut. Click and hold LMB to select an input point, then right-click to paste the text from the clipboard. To copy text, you simply select with LMB, click MMB to cut, then immediately click RMB to paste back into the same spot while also maintaining the clipboard copy. I use it daily a…

Inspired wholesale by the same feature in Oberon. And one of the things that makes me miss proper three button mice.

Good call, I occasionally forget how much Acme was inspired by Oberon. As for mice, I am currently using a Logitech 3-button "MouseMan" mouse via a PS/2 to USB converter, but if you want something more modern I find the Kensington Expert Mouse trackball an acceptable alternative.

Re: In Praise of Chorded Input

#26

Post by crabl »

derefr wrote: post #22

> Chorded input is rare these days - the movement of software to touchscreen devices argues against it. Multitouch gestures are a form of chorded input, no? And one we’ve greatly under-explored, IMHO. Probably mostly because people tend to be using either touchscreens that are mobile, or touch pads that are rather small, and so you can only fit one hand’s worth of fingers on the digitizer, and one hand’s fingers can’…

Yup, exactly this. The fact that most iPad "creativity" apps (looking at Procreate, Notability, Photoshop, etc) are using essentially the same set of interactions as we have on the Mac at the moment (limited to a single input method at a time) means that despite having "10x" the available "interaction bandwidth", we are using only 1/10th of it. Gestures are problematic because of their lack of discoverability, but there are definitely other (even simpler) ways to achieve this (can't really say too much since I'm working on a product in this space).

Re: In Praise of Chorded Input

#27

Post by zzo38computer »

zzo38computer wrote: post #2

I think chorded input is good, and I dislike touch screens. I also thought of using Hollerith chording for entering text using a numeric keypad (although a separate key will be needed for a space), rather than what most things use for entering text using a numeric keypad, which is worse, I think.

A keyboard with only a few keys for entering text is not a substitute for a full keyboard, but may be useful for small devices that only have a few keys.

Re: In Praise of Chorded Input

#28

Post by zzo38computer »

mhd wrote: post #9
floren wrote: post #5

Plan 9's acme editor uses mouse chords: select text with the left mouse button, then while holding LMB click the middle mouse button to cut. Click and hold LMB to select an input point, then right-click to paste the text from the clipboard. To copy text, you simply select with LMB, click MMB to cut, then immediately click RMB to paste back into the same spot while also maintaining the clipboard copy. I use it daily a…

Inspired wholesale by the same feature in Oberon. And one of the things that makes me miss proper three button mice.

I also want a proper three button mouse; I don't use the wheel and would rather have three full buttons.

Re: In Praise of Chorded Input

#30

Post by tartoran »

falcolas wrote: post #11

The older I get, the less I like key chording. This is particularly exacerbated by the lack of a common key chording scheme between Windows, Linux, and OSX. It becomes a mental stutter as I have to constantly override my muscle memory. It's probably why I like VIM editor schemes so much - there's significantly less chording required. I've also noticed the preference come up when playing games. Ideally, I would simply…

I love key cording but use it on actions I am likely to repeat thousands of times if not more. Yes, they are all inconsistent between systems but how many times do you switch systems? And even if that happens on a daily basis, say use one program from one system and another one from a different system, it is still a net gain to learn the shortcuts for things that are likely to be used a lot.

I get tripped off a bit when switching keyboards, between desktop and laptop. Still, it is worth the effort IMO.

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