Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A different kind of keyboard

ianthehenry.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 152 posts

Re: A different kind of keyboard

#121

Post by GrinningFool »

shultays wrote: post #48
bodge5000 wrote: post #42

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…

Phones (at least android ones, don't know about apple ones) allow you to change your keyboard and there are all kind of keyboards. I was using a "swipe" keyboard before, looks (and can work) similar to a normal keyboard but you could also swipe your finger over the keys you want to type without raising your finger and it was doing a pretty good job at predicting what you wanted to type. I wouldn't be surprised if the…

How do you know who you can trust? When all apps (including keyboards, I assume) get Internet access by default, I am very reluctant to try any third party keyboard at all.

Re: A different kind of keyboard

#122

Post by biryani_chicken »

There's this really interesting (touchscreen) keyboard for android called 8vim in which you write by drawing circular shapes. I can attain a decent speed after using it for 30 minutes but haven't really kept it on for long: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/inc.flide.vi8/

It's actually a clone of another keyboard, 8pen, which was abandoned. Here's a video of how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99vsUF4NuLk

Re: A different kind of keyboard

#123

Post by manwe150 »

egypturnash wrote: post #109
dom111 wrote: post #52

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…

https://twiddler.tekgear.com - bluetooth chord keyboard that fits in one hand, look in their forums for a whole lot of different layouts to try, including ones designed for programmers.

It seems surprisingly hard to find a video of someone using that proficiently (I couldn’t find any videos on their website, and youtube was mostly just unboxing demos), though it sounds interesting to observe.

Re: A different kind of keyboard

#124

Post by stronglikedan »

hundchenkatze wrote: post #120
ruffrey wrote: post #118

I applaud any effort to rethink keyboards from first principles. After years of shoulder, neck and back pain I discovered that the root cause was the standard keyboard design. It causes rounded shoulders. Perhaps my shoulders are just too wide. This pinched all sorts of muscles, tendons and nerves. Doctors and physical therapists just failed to identify the issue. Weight lifting didn't help all that much, even with a…

I was experiencing the same – narrow hand position causing lots of back pain. Keeping my arms/shoulders in a natural position seems to have fixed it. There's also tons of split keyboards available now. https://github.com/diimdeep/awesome-split-keyboards

All of those beautiful split keyboards, and not a single one with a proper layout. Shame. Looks like I'm sticking with my Surface Ergonomic, because it's the only one I've found that has super keys on both sides, and a context key on the right side. I just wish they'd make a mechanical version.

Re: A different kind of keyboard

#125

Post by ruffrey »

smallpipe wrote: post #119
ruffrey wrote: post #118

I applaud any effort to rethink keyboards from first principles. After years of shoulder, neck and back pain I discovered that the root cause was the standard keyboard design. It causes rounded shoulders. Perhaps my shoulders are just too wide. This pinched all sorts of muscles, tendons and nerves. Doctors and physical therapists just failed to identify the issue. Weight lifting didn't help all that much, even with a…

Are you aware of split keyboards? I use a mistel barrocco (essentially two normal keyboard halves tied together with a USB cable) and j can’t recommend it enough

Thanks, yep, tried a few but am too addicted to the chiclet style.

Re: A different kind of keyboard

#126

Post by tomcam »

ruffrey wrote: post #125
smallpipe wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you aware of split keyboards? I use a mistel barrocco (essentially two normal keyboard halves tied together with a USB cable) and j can’t recommend it enough

Thanks, yep, tried a few but am too addicted to the chiclet style.

> am too addicted to the chiclet style

You sick bastard. Seriously, though, it's most cool that you came up with such a simple solution. Hat's off, and glad you got that pain under control.

I started using a keyboard heavily around 40 years ago and knew from carpal tunnel problems as a pianist that I'd have to be careful. My kids love to joke that my posture looks like it's from an ergonomics manual, but no carpal tunnel since 1982!

(I'm saying my approach is better than yours or would have helped, just empathizing because I would be super miserable if programming caused physical pain.)

Re: A different kind of keyboard

#127

Post by macNchz »

aasasd wrote: post #76
mlang23 wrote: post #73

iOS actually has a multi-touch based braille keyboard built-in. So you can have a rather similar behaviour, however, without extra hardware, with native iOS. In Settings > Accessiblity > VoiceOver, add "Braille keyboard" to the rotor options, and then use two fingers in a circular motion until you hear "Braille input". You can now hold the screen away from you in landscape mode, and use three fingers from each hand t…

A demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wueLXCbm_KY

Thanks for the link, super interesting to watch. Over the years as a programmer I've picked up knowledge about web accessibility from a mechanical, standards/implementation focused point of view, but this video is helping me realize that my understanding has been lacking a level of depth and empathy for the real people using these tools.

Looking through some of her other videos I found this demonstration of camera-to-speech in the iPhone pretty awesome–I had no idea that this was a feature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CAafjodkyE

Re: A different kind of keyboard

#128

Post by aasasd »

aasasd wrote: post #76
mlang23 wrote: post #73

iOS actually has a multi-touch based braille keyboard built-in. So you can have a rather similar behaviour, however, without extra hardware, with native iOS. In Settings > Accessiblity > VoiceOver, add "Braille keyboard" to the rotor options, and then use two fingers in a circular motion until you hear "Braille input". You can now hold the screen away from you in landscape mode, and use three fingers from each hand t…

A demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wueLXCbm_KY

By the way, besides the wacky keyboard blind people also have another, erhm, ‘perk’ in their use of phones: they, pretty obviously, keep the brightness at zero. Gonna last a long time on a charge.

I keep thinking occasionally that some things that I do with the phone could be done with a small one-handed wireless remote/controller and audio output—so I could trigger them while doing something else, e.g. walking outside. For example, Anki already supports either a specific remote or bluetooth remotes in general, and has TTS. Also, there are games using audio as output, which might work in a similar manner—may be interesting to try, if not very engrossing.

Re: A different kind of keyboard

#129

Post by BlueDingo »

stronglikedan wrote: post #124
hundchenkatze wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was experiencing the same – narrow hand position causing lots of back pain. Keeping my arms/shoulders in a natural position seems to have fixed it. There's also tons of split keyboards available now. https://github.com/diimdeep/awesome-split-keyboards

All of those beautiful split keyboards, and not a single one with a proper layout. Shame. Looks like I'm sticking with my Surface Ergonomic, because it's the only one I've found that has super keys on both sides, and a context key on the right side. I just wish they'd make a mechanical version.

The keys can be remapped, right? My keyboard even saves my configuration itself so it remains when swapped between computers.

Re: A different kind of keyboard

#130

Post by likeclockwork »

yissp wrote: post #85
akavel wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people already can and do this. See e.g.: - Steve Mann: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann_(inventor) - https://chordite.com

Or you could be like Stephen Wolfram and walk around with a laptop harness https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2019/02/seeking-the-prod...

I have to get out of New York City.
Post reply on HN