Re: One handed Emacs

[Richard Kaszeta <rich@kaszeta.org>]

"Jeffrey L. Greer" <jlgreer1@excite.com> writes:
> I am on the assistive technology committee for my school district. I
> have tested a number of one handed keyboards. 

While I have full use of my hands, out of curiousity, I've used a
number of one-hand keyboards of a variety of types as well.  The best
two I've seen are:

1. The half-qwerty keyboard (http://half-qwerty.com). Funky chording
concept: the keyboard is a standard keyboard layout, but if the space
bar is chorded with a letter or number key, it gives the equivalent
key from the same finger position for the other hand (check the web
site if this doesn't make any sense).  At least for me I was typing
reasonably (with ctrl- and alt- keys, even) almost immediately, you
just have to learn to hit the space bar and not think about things too
much.  Downside is that these things are unreasonably expensive, given
that you should be able to do the same approach in software alone.
2. The oft-mentioned frogpad
(http://www.frogpad.com/Images/frogpads/frogusb-fullview.jpg to see
the idea).  Fairly nice layout, but you spend a lot of time chording,
since every key has at least 5 meanings attached to it.  You can't do
straight-up ctrl- and alt- keys, it basically treats these as sticky
bits.  I was typing decently after a week, and might outdo the
half-qwerty with it if I practiced.

-- 
Richard W Kaszeta
rich@kaszeta.org
http://www.kaszeta.org/rich