Hotze wrote:
>
> >>2)It mentioned a "new input device" that was before the Xerox machine,
> >>to be used alongside the mouse, was flexible but required training.
> >>What was it?
> >
> >Doug Engelbart designed a five-key keyboard that would do most of seven-bit
> >ASCII by accepting chording combinations. His idea was that you'd always
> >run the keyboard with one hand and the mouse with the other.
>
> Sounds cool, but hard to use, especially in a time when to use a computer,
> you needed to type at least 30-50WPM (WAM), and spent enough time on a
> computer to compute in your sleep!!! That kind of typing can't be easy to
> forget.
> I recently saw a one-handed keyboard, which looked kinda like a MS
> Natural Keyboard, with the right hand sawed off, and the numeric keypad next
> to the left. It looked like there were a few extra keys, but you had a key
> that you held down, kinda like shift, and it would make the oposite
> character (like A for H, S for J, etc.)
Nope, a chord keyboard is one with spots for the five fingers that
produce codes based on chords (combinations) of fingers pressed down,
frequently with a bit of palm action as well. The ones I've been
looking at are increasingly attractive since they require much less
finger movement than keyboards and my inherited arthritis mostly
hassles me when I'm at the keyboard.
--
Ward Griffiths
They say that politics makes strange bedfellows.
Of course, the main reason they cuddle up is to screw somebody else.
Michael Flynn, _Rogue Star_
Received on Sat May 30 1998 - 00:32:13 BST