> > Other keywords to look for would be 'chording keyboard' or 'Microwriter'.
> > The latter is the trade name of a machine sold in the UK
> ...
> > I got a Microwriter Agenda (a later model) at a radio rally, and have
> > played with a it a bit. One thing that becomes very obvious is that the
> > choice of chords depends on what you are doing - the Microwriter was
> > designed for typing text, and common programming characters, like '{' are
> > painful to type.
> As I understand it, the innovative part of the Microwriter
> design was the system of mnemonics to help you learn the
> chording patterns.
Well, the idea isn't dead at all, there have been several
atempts over the past 150 years to create single hand
input devices (or typewriters in the pre computer time).
Starting from hegehog like thingys, over to typewriters
for special scripts onty stuff like Microwriter or Twiddler.
And there will be always new attemts, either using existing
hardware, for example like the cutkey
http://www.misawa.co.jp/CUTKEY/
or, very notable, the T9 stuff (but again _very_ disputable)
http://www.tegic.com/
I have even seen a blind woman usin a 7 button keypad
for direct ASCII input - no joke, she just typed the bits,
using one hand for reading, and the other for writing.
(To be exact, she even extended the coding - for some
abreviation like Hr. or Fr. (Mr/Ms) she used 'unused'
codes - in her mind unused, like the square braces,
controll codes or 'unused' codes between x'21' and x'40' :)
She asked me to help her with an system upgrade to a
PC, but after seeing how she acomplished her work, I
just added some import/export filters to her dBase app,
to get the data in and out from her S100 system :)
Gruss
H.
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Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK
Received on Mon Jul 26 1999 - 15:36:36 BST