Thanks for your input on keyboard layout.
I see that I differ from other abc users in that I have opted to relearn how to type on the Dvorak keyboard, and that I avoid the usage of the mouse if at all possible. Keyboard shortcuts all the way, man. The Dvorak keyboard doesn't have the quality that all letters abcdefgh are keyed with the same hand. Of course, even with a qwerty keyboard, you still need the right hand for the |,[],: <,> characters, which are used quite frequently. Or is this what you used the mouse for? If having the right hand free for the mouse is important, the keys could be remapped so that all the frequently used characters, including |,[],:,<,> are on the left hand. This may even be better having all the letters abcdefg on one row. (Incidentally, Dvorak also designed keyboard layouts for people who only had control of one hand. They are now a standard part of Windows. Apparently people can type up to 55 wpm with these. I'd like to see a one handed person do that with qwerty.)
For those who experimented with alternate keyboard layouts, and later switched back, how long did you try the alternate layouts? It took me about a month to learn Dvorak, and another 2 or so to reach a decent speed, but it was worth it. Might the difficulty have been that your brain was (soft)-wired for qwerty because it's all you've ever learned and it was hard to rewire to something else, rather than a difficulty inherent in the keyboard layout? Despite what some have said, other than the problem of our brains being softwired to type a certain way, I have a hard time believing that something more closely resembling a keyboard layout couldn't be better (in the long term at least) than something where the main keys used are laid out apparently randomly. If you were to design a layout to enter the tune part of an abc, without knowing where the pertinent letters are on a standard qwerty keyboard layout, would you put the letters where they currently are on a qwerty keyboard? Probably not.
I assume that for most or all of you, though, entering abc tunes does not make up the bulk of your typing, so it is probably not worth the effort to relearn how to type on a new layout, unless you could use it for all your typing, which you couldn't in the case of an abc friendly layout. I think that answers my question as to whether it is an idea worth pursuing. Perhaps I'll experiment with it myself, and see if I like it any better.
Randy.
At 02:31 PM 18/11/2003 +0000, you wrote:
Jack Campin writes: | > Meanwhile, for most tunes I can type abc nearly as fast as | > I can play it. It's seems unlikely that any clever keyboard | > mapping could do much better. Having the notes all on the | > left hand is probably much of this. | | I'd never thought about that. For me that makes it more difficult - | while I'm right-handed, I use the mouse left-handed, as many people | do who started using mice before the IBM PC versions came along. | My first was the bitpad on the ICL/Three Rivers Perq; all of us in | the project had our bitpads on the left except for the left-hander, | and nobody wanted to borrow his machine. And the early publicity | material for the Mac always showed the mouse being used left-handed.
It has always seemed to me that musicians should react the other way. After all, right-handers who play stringed instruments always seem to want to use their left hand for the fingerboard. And if you're a keyboard player, I'd think you would of necessity be fairly ambidextrous.
I usually put a mouse on whichever side is most convenient. I find that switching sides with the mouse doesn't take any thought; I just do it. This seems to surprise a lot of people when they notice it. But I'd think that a keyboard player would just react by asking "What sort of keyboards do you play?"
| What would help for me would be mapping the numeric keypad (at the | right) to note letters. I never use the keypad otherwise, and it | would free up my left hand to stay on the mouse.
That sounds like a good idea. In fact, a clever abc editor might have an option to keep track of the tonic from the K: lines, and map 1-7 to notes in the obvious way. You'd use 0 for a rest. Maybe you could use the + and - keys on the keypad to do octave shifts. Actually, you want lengths, too. So maybe you could use the shift key to select between 1-7 meaning notes and lengths. Then, with the left-hand shift key, you could enter notes and lengths entirely with the right hand. You'd still need to move your hand for bar lines, I suppose.
It might be worth experimenting with.
--
O
<:#/> John Chambers
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