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Engelbart's Violin - chorded keyboards

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Re: Engelbart's Violin - chorded keyboards

#11

Post by fusiongyro »

I succumb to these emotions from time to time, but it's worth noting that—software wise—you can certainly live in the past we hoped we'd have if you put in a modicum of effort:

Plan 9: actively maintained, runs well in a VM: http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/

Smalltalk: many options, notably Pharo: http://www.pharo-project.org

Lisp machine emulators: http://www.unlambda.com/

Haiku is approaching a 1.0 release quickly: http://haiku-os.org/

And of course you can have a "real" keyboard if you desire, such as the Kinesis Ergo: http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/ Switching to this keyboard and the Dvorak layout is certainly an upgrade from consumer to professional equipment and, requiring about a month to retrain, will certainly dispel the illusion that discomfort is an essential and missing part of acquiring expertise at computing. The fact that I type faster than my peers makes the fact that I write code much more slowly than them all the more bizarre.

I'd love to know why superior technologies fail to conquer markets, particularly enabling technologies like Smalltalk, but my point is that our man Stanislav has no excuse: they exist now and he knows about them and can use them right now if he wants. Instead he seems to be embarking on some kind of ambitious hardware project. Good luck to him on that, but if his definition of success greatly exceeds (say) CoffeeScript or BeOS's success, he can expect failure, regardless of how long his ideas endure or how influential they are.

Re: Engelbart's Violin - chorded keyboards

#13

Post by Dn_Ab »

In case they come to dominate as the input devices to eyewear displays in a (possibly haptic) glove like form factor; I've been mentally preparing myself to not arbitrarily dismiss these devices and learn their use. Such resistance to change is how people who were once ahead involuntarily fall into curmudgeonry.

Re: Engelbart's Violin - chorded keyboards

#14

Post by rsaarelm »

I wonder how much help mature 3D printing might be. You could already do a rough approximation of form-fitting case and keys for a one-hand chorded keyboard with today's printers. The microswitches and electronics would be all DIY though.

Looks like the Twiddler site is selling the things (http://www.handykey.com/), but $200 is a lot for a thing I'm not sure would be any better than a regular keyboard. Also, thing like that really should be wireless. I do hope that with the ascent of mobile computing, we're going to see some more innovation with terminal design, since the age-old typewriter television paradigm really doesn't work on the move.

In general, besides RSI, I'm not sure how much the keyboard matters in the end. People who work in the analog, like carpenters, musicians and surgeons, can do better quality work with better quality instruments. But programmers work in the digital, like writers and mathematicians. Mathematicians don't generally worry about how the craftsmanship of their whiteboard markers affects the quality of their work.

Re: Engelbart's Violin - chorded keyboards

#15

Post by gouranga »

aidenn0 wrote: post #12

As far as proffessional equipment goes, we're there... I have an 8 core workstation with 8gb of ram and 2 24" monitors running linux with a window manager heavily customized by me. Compare that to a macbook air.

Hey, I have a 2 core ThinkPad t61, with 4gb of ram and a 14" WXGA screen and I bet my equipment is as professional as yours...

However, 99% of that equipment is a black box designed for the lowest grade user which is the very apt point of the article.

You are not a professional - you are a salt mine worker as am I.

Re: Engelbart's Violin - chorded keyboards

#16

Post by gouranga »

fusiongyro wrote: post #11

I succumb to these emotions from time to time, but it's worth noting that—software wise—you can certainly live in the past we hoped we'd have if you put in a modicum of effort: Plan 9: actively maintained, runs well in a VM: http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/ Smalltalk: many options, notably Pharo: http://www.pharo-project.org Lisp machine emulators: http://www.unlambda.com/ Haiku is approaching a 1.0 release quickly:…

Superior technologies succumb to marketing from lesser products.

Going back to the guy who built a motorbike in the desert, the Citroen 2CV is a remarkable piece of engineering and design, but everyone would rather drive a disposable iPod (ford) than a LISP machine (2CV).

This is precisely due to marketing and turd polish.

Re: Engelbart's Violin - chorded keyboards

#17

Post by Arcanum-XIII »

asciilifeform wrote: post #7
SeanLuke wrote: post #6

> This rather unimpressive “hello world” was achieved after around fifteen minutes of practice. What would it have been like if I had been put in front of an Endfield keyboard as a small child, instead of a typewriter monstrosity? As someone who has played piano since he was eight, I can answer that question: you'd still be unusably slow. This is the terrible secret of the chorded keyboard: it requires that you press…

Piano keys have centimeters of travel distance. Chorded computer keyboards - not necessarily. One can "cheat" by requiring only the faintest movements from the fingers. The Microwriter arguably does this. Also: have you ever seen a court stenographer at work? You are simply wrong. (At least, with regards to the limits of what human hands are ultimately capable of.)

Guitar are pattern instrument : once you know one, you can move it to change tonality, without any problem — and they require finger movement of less than 5mm (even less on a very good prepared electric guitar) Playing one note at a time will still be incredibly faster than moving chord, even chord that you have practiced for a (very, very, very) long time.

Re: Engelbart's Violin - chorded keyboards

#18

Post by Lewton »

imo, the [1]datahand keyboard makes a lot more sense than chorded keyboards. Each finger has access to four characters mapped to up, down, left or right. All it takes is a short movement of the finger to press a key.

[1] http://cdn1.mobilemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/image_6...

Re: Engelbart's Violin - chorded keyboards

#19

Post by __alexs »

asciilifeform wrote: post #7
SeanLuke wrote: post #6

> This rather unimpressive “hello world” was achieved after around fifteen minutes of practice. What would it have been like if I had been put in front of an Endfield keyboard as a small child, instead of a typewriter monstrosity? As someone who has played piano since he was eight, I can answer that question: you'd still be unusably slow. This is the terrible secret of the chorded keyboard: it requires that you press…

Piano keys have centimeters of travel distance. Chorded computer keyboards - not necessarily. One can "cheat" by requiring only the faintest movements from the fingers. The Microwriter arguably does this. Also: have you ever seen a court stenographer at work? You are simply wrong. (At least, with regards to the limits of what human hands are ultimately capable of.)

Stenotypes are also called shorthand machines for a reason. They might be able to type 300 WPM, but that's partially because they aren't writing english.

Re: Engelbart's Violin - chorded keyboards

#20

Post by cykey_bellaire »

I was the co-patent holder of Microwriting with Cy Endfield (film director - Zulu). 25000 people purchased the Microwriter and the follow on machine the AgendA which was a true pocket organiser, diary, alarm etc and was a fore runner to many of the current machines and was manufactured from 1987 to 1991. It only failed because of the economic downturn of the early 1990's when Sir Mark Weinberg withdrew from the project after investing a lot of money in a new machine which over stretched the finances of the company. The CyKey (the name is a tribute to Cy Endfield) is still available as an add on to a PC or Mac and was developed to fill a gap and was developed by us here in Devon. Basic Microwriting can be mastered in about 20 minutes by most people because of very clever mnemonics which Cy created; based on something we all already know-the shape of the letters!
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