From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Xah Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Half-QWERTY keyboard minor mode Date: Sat, 4 Oct 2008 14:47:08 -0700 (PDT) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <6952e93a-e5fd-4970-a6e2-a05518fbfd00@p31g2000prf.googlegroups.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1223160055 12586 80.91.229.12 (4 Oct 2008 22:40:55 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 4 Oct 2008 22:40:55 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sun Oct 05 00:41:51 2008 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1KmFot-000381-9c for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sun, 05 Oct 2008 00:41:51 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:33492 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1KmFnn-0000iq-EJ for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sat, 04 Oct 2008 18:40:43 -0400 Original-Path: news.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews.google.com!p31g2000prf.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 45 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.6.185.159 Original-X-Trace: posting.google.com 1223156828 6747 127.0.0.1 (4 Oct 2008 21:47:08 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 4 Oct 2008 21:47:08 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: p31g2000prf.googlegroups.com; posting-host=24.6.185.159; posting-account=bRPKjQoAAACxZsR8_VPXCX27T2YcsyMA User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10_4_11; en) AppleWebKit/525.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.2 Safari/525.22, gzip(gfe), gzip(gfe) Original-Xref: news.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:163025 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:58367 Archived-At: Corey Foote wrote: =C2=ABFor details on the half-QWERTY keyboard see:http://www.billbuxton.com= / matiasHCI96.html#c2=C2=BB half-QWERTY seems ill conceived. If you check the author, it's his university thesis and the design Patented in US and Europe by his own company. It compares something he cooked up =E2=80=9Chalf-dvorak=E2=80=9D and chalk = it up to use in single handed typing devices in wearable computer. For comparison, on standard keyboard, if you only have one hand, there's already Single handed Dvorak, one version for left and and one version for right hand. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard So, if you are handicapp'd and can only use one hand to type on standard PC keyboard, single handed Dvorak would probably be much more efficient. (the article don't mention it) Now, if one is thinking of keyboard input devices that must be designed for single hand use, as stated in the article, such as some future vision of wearable computer on the forearm, then there's no good reason to limit the physical design of such input device to something like cutting up existing to half of standard PC keyboard. There are, for example, numberous design of chorded input devices for single hand that are actually in use. As for ease of transition of learning, as cited in the article as a major reason... there are lots problems. For example, first of all, majority of people who use a PC keyboard do not touch type. So, he's presumed ease of transition is useless. Even, suppose we limit the subjects to people who already touch type qwerty, then, learning the half-QWERTY is not necessarily faster than learning a single hand dvorak. (the simply doesn't mention single hand dvorak) ... Xah =E2=88=91 http://xahlee.org/ =E2=98=84