> Changing keys would be rather hard on a touch typist, don't you think?
As for what I said of morphing shape of keycaps: I think I recall a
MacBook circa 2018 having something like this - at least one special row
near the top? It had programmatically controlled colorized symbols, and was
a small touch screen. There's also been anime depiction of "projected
keyboards" -- the keys are projected onto a surface, and some AI-assisted
camera monitors your finger motions and is able to compute/interpret what
projected keys are being pressed (and those projections of course can be of
any symbol shape).
I recently came across the old H.S. yearbook of my grandmother from 1940s,
and it had a report/atrticle of a typing-class (all female; it mentioned
there were two males but they dropped out of the class), and the young
ladies had won a regional contest at a blazing speed of ~20 wpm. I
recall actually using a typewriter long ago, and I recall there being an
implicit speed limit because if you went too fast, the metal hammers would
bind up -- so I imagine in the 1940s the mechanical design of consumer/H.S.
grade typewriters maybe wasn't the best (so 20wpm then maybe was
reasonable).
I remember even by the late 1980s, "most" people still didn't know how to
type very efficiently (as "most" people still didn't even have a computer
at home). If I had to guess, I'd say in the 1980s the average WPM was
still ~20, while today I suspect it's over 100 wpm (be it either thumbing
text messages or actual typing) -- that's just a guess, no research. But
now-a-days, I don't ever see any "Typing Class" specific classes at H.S. or
college. Collectively or in aggregate, we've "all" learned that skill at
a sufficient speed and accuracy. It's like the width of roads -- or the
width of lanes within a road -- we're forever stuck making those about the
width of two horses pulling a carriage.
But if your keyboard was some kind rubix-cube type device (which I think I
had once seen such a thing, as a keyboard) -- maybe some specialized
training would be needed again. But I guess to be worth it, it would have
to show trained operators can get some kind of orders-of-magnitude
improvement (300+ wpm), and maybe with the "speed of human thought" that's
still not necessary, because we're still going to pause and think in
between typing. Good point in stock brokers using some special keyboard
-- I wonder if perhaps not just for speed, but perhaps also security? I
wonder if a kind of "morphing organic" keycap keyboard might help in
password/identity verification? (sort of like private keys -- instead of
typing a password, what if a few keys are configured to show your chosen
codewords mingled in with a few random words, and you just press the key
with your codewords in the right sequence -- afterwhich the keys revert to
their normal purpose? not sure if that really helps, since the keyboard is
then showing portions of your password -- maybe the keycaps could be angled
or polarized to be less visible from side angles {like screen privacy
things}).
I recall looking up the origin of the QWERTY keyboard - a rough beginning
in 1874 but rather refined by 1878, and having essentially the same layout
we have today. So it's neat to me that for all the advances in computing
processors and memory -- but we're still basically using a typewriter as
our primary input :D I'm not sure if any alternative can really give any
orders-of-magnitude improvement to the average user (in speed or
accuracy). BUT, it's really hard to think outside the box on a 150+ year
old design that's so well accepted by the general public -- like the
pen/pencil, it's still a good intuitive design.
-SL
On Wed, Jan 25, 2023 at 2:53 PM Bill Gunshannon via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
> On 1/25/2023 3:22 PM, John-Paul Stewart via cctalk wrote:
> > On 1/25/23 11:53, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote:
> >> And back on the stenography-keyboard like thing -- what about morphing
> >> keys? If a keyboard had actual screens on the keys, and the keys change
> >> (the actual symbol) based on the context of whatever you're doing. I
> know
> >> we have macros and reprogrammable keyboards, but morphing the actual
> symbol
> >> on the keys might be neat.
> > A keyboard using small 48x48 pixel OLED screens on each of the keys has
> > been done. It was many years ago and they were super expensive at the
> > time. As a result they were not commercially successful.
> >
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimus_Maximus_keyboard
>
> Changing keys would be rather hard on a touch typist, don't you think?
>
>
> bill
>
>
>
