101–110 of 152 posts
I love how honest this is about the limitations and the whole design process. Truly a great example of a real hacker project I have a Georgi keyboard (mentioned in the article) which I started getting to grips with then put aside during a way too busy period at work. This has made me want to dig it out and try again. I’m also thinking that two of those faunchpads put together on the long edges could make an even bett…
Calculus teaches us the nature of optima. Sometimes they're at one extreme. Sometimes the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle. This is one extreme. The sweet spot is in the middle, using tap/hold keys on a more conventional keyboard as supported by QMK firmware. It's brilliant to keep your fingers near home row. It's dogmatic to not have the other keys even be there, or to force yourself to use one hand if you have…
I've always thought it was a bit odd that for touchscreen phones we just decided to grab the near exact keyboard layout we use with physical keyboards, and just stick them on a tiny touchscreen. Sure, everyone knows how to use it and its fine for early smartphones, but it seems like a really terrible place for a full keyboard to go; imagine using a keyboard the size of your phone keyboard (so about the third the size…
An anecdote: Early in Steam's controller support, they used a really nice alternative keyboard, where you picked one of 8 directions with the analog stick, and pressed a face key for the specific letter. It was fast, convenient, and built for controllers.
It didn't last.
Steam shortly moved back to a standard QWERTY keyboard layout with the joysticks moving virtual fingers. If I had to speculate, I'd say that they received too much negative feedback, because people didn't immediately recognize it as a keyboard, and didn't want to learn something new.
Even if it's slower, virtual QWERTY keyboards are (almost) universally familiar, and there's nothing new to learn.
I wonder if there are benchmark for swipe versus normal keyboard...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wueLXCbm_KY
That's mesmerizing to watch – thanks for sharing!
Especially when PS Vita has a rear touch pad, on which extra functions are mapped in some games—and I can't tell which areas have the mappings, resulting in me either pressing the areas accidentally with my grownup hands, or missing them when they're needed. Or when Apple adds the touchbar instead of keyboard buttons, with none of that magic.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It would teach sight-able people how to write braille. Is this an interesting goal? I absolutely understand why it would be extremely valuable for most people to know their local sign language for communication with those who can't hear, but I fail to see how wider learning of a very special writing system (one that anyway can't be currently read from electronic devices) would impact the sight-impaired community.
The daughter of a coworker of mine has an elementary-school friendship with a blind girl. When she wanted to write a letter to her, I embossed the text for her, because, you know, I can write braille. I was told the little girl was very thrilled to receive a piece of paper she could actually read. But I guess this sort of human interaction isn't worth the effort, right? :-( Sad to read your attitude.
Each letter is a two-button chord, but in practice, each letter is an arpeggio because the Twiddler only sends a key event when you release a button. The layout is designed so that when writing English, there is a very high probability that the second button you press for a letter will be the first button you press for the next letter, so you can keep that button held down, press the second button, then release the first button to send the next letter. Your first three fingers (it doesn't use the pinky row) will "walk" around the three rows of the Twiddler.
This is kind of making me want to pull out my Twiddler again, I really haven't used it since I gave up on trying to run Illustrator on a Surface tablet instead of a Mac laptop.
I used to be anti touch screen for typing, until I learned how to use swipe typing. I think I type much faster on a touch keyboard with swipe... I wonder if there are benchmark for swipe versus normal keyboard...
I'm really keen on things like this. I love (in theory at least) the concept of being able to work from literally anywhere, and the concept of some sort of smart display (glasses, lenses, etc) but having a physical keyboard to type out code is always a major barrier. Something like this starts to edge towards that vision which is cool. I wonder as well if there's a way to have some sort of bracelet (but probably some…
Calculus teaches us the nature of optima. Sometimes they're at one extreme. Sometimes the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle. This is one extreme. The sweet spot is in the middle, using tap/hold keys on a more conventional keyboard as supported by QMK firmware. It's brilliant to keep your fingers near home row. It's dogmatic to not have the other keys even be there, or to force yourself to use one hand if you have…
https://github.com/kmonad/kmonad
For example, you can put shift keys under your pinky fingers:
(defsrc a ;)
(deflayer main (tap-hold-next-release 300 a sft)
(tap-hold-next-release 300 ; sft))