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The keyboard layout project

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Re: The keyboard layout project

#41

Post by mistercow »

MTGandP wrote: post #39
Evbn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what the ethics review board would think about training someone on a nonstandard keyboard layout, as that would introduce a handicap to their life outside the study.

You can use a new keyboard layout and still remember QWERTY. It's just like learning a second language (only it takes a lot less time).

You can, but if you don't regularly practice, your QWERTY proficiency will deteriorate startlingly quickly. It's easier to pick back up than learning a whole new layout, but still.

It was really unsettling to watch, in only two weeks, my QWERTY proficiency drop from "90 WPM burst speed" to "stare at the keyboard while I type".

Re: The keyboard layout project

#42

Post by MTGandP »

mistercow wrote: post #40
MTGandP wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, writer of The Keyboard Layout Project here. I'm well aware of the limitations of scoring a layout based on crude heuristics, and I'm trying to collect some good data. Right now I have some data from a few layouts that I've collected using [Amphetype]( http://code.google.com/p/amphetype/ ), which records speed and accuracy for characters, trigraphs, and words. I'm curious, what program did you use to collect typin…

I'll see if I can dig up my old app for collecting the data (it was an OS X app, but would be easy enough to port). It can actually be layout agnostic (although I may have just implemented it with Colemak in mind, since it was for my own use). For the user's sake, it asks you to type out symbols according to your own layout, but the way it stores the data is only interested in key positions. One confounding factor in…

Thanks, that could be valuable. Is the data separated by keyboard layout?

Re: The keyboard layout project

#43

Post by MTGandP »

mistercow wrote: post #41
MTGandP wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use a new keyboard layout and still remember QWERTY. It's just like learning a second language (only it takes a lot less time).

You can , but if you don't regularly practice, your QWERTY proficiency will deteriorate startlingly quickly. It's easier to pick back up than learning a whole new layout, but still. It was really unsettling to watch, in only two weeks, my QWERTY proficiency drop from "90 WPM burst speed" to "stare at the keyboard while I type".

Then I'll make sure my test subjects continue to practice QWERTY.

Re: The keyboard layout project

#44

Post by stinky613 »

MTGandP wrote: post #31
stinky613 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great that it works for you, but 'widespread adoption'? Really? If you were to take a random sample of 100 computer users how many do you seriously think have adopted Dvorak?

IIRC, Dvorak has about 500,000 users worldwide.

Okay. If that's just food for thought, fine, but if that's an argument for widespread adoption it falls pretty short. In 2011 35% of the world's population were internet users according to a quick wikipedia reference source [1]. That's 2.45 billion people. Taking the 500,000 Dvorak users into account yields 1 Dvorak user out of every 4900 internet users. I realize these are all kind of soft numbers we're throwing around, but I feel my point stands.

[1] FWIW, http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/facts/2011/material/ICTFactsFig...

Re: The keyboard layout project

#45

Post by hso9791 »

As some already have pointed out, internationalization can be somewhat tricky on alternative keyboard layouts.

As it is, I find that languages with extra letters often move some extra symbols (like {[]}) into combinations with peripheral keys, thus making coding a chore as compared to on US keyboards.

What I would like to see is if anybody has a good way of getting rid of both the "key" and "board" part of keyboards. Electronics and manufacturing is so cheap today that this could be feasible to produce on a large scale.

For those who have a sense of rhythm, I'm thinking a combination of twisting/pushing/tapping/whatever moves that in combination would indicate a given symbol. This would take some focused effort to learn, but after that...

The form factor could be a ball, a pair of gloves, a combination with pedals, a guitar-like thing, whatever. Keyboards would make a cheap fallback in settings where such a contraption would be inappropriate.

Has anyone else thought of something similar?

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