[ I warm-up this old thread again... ] On Mon, Mar 05, 2007 at 12:02:31AM +0200, Lars Hallberg wrote: > a mock-up on a 90-key by one stroke finger keyboard. Think this might be > an usable and pretty efficient input method. > > http://www.micropp.se/openmoko/
This looks very promising. I like this idea. The only issue I see is that the least used characters (numbers) are the easiest to enter. IMHO, the mostly used characters should be accessible without dragging. Please check http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchstabenh%C3%A4ufigkeit#Buchstabenh.C3.A4ufigkeiten_in_deutschsprachigen_Texten for a list of mostly used letters in german. In english, the frequency is similar, but unfortunately I can't find the table right now. I remember I have seen the english table as I was searching for information about dvorak keyboards on wikipedia, but I can't find it anymore. I suggest to add a second layout, and use one of the unused drag positions to switch between your original "phone layout" and a second "text layout". We could even have a third "programmer layout" or something. When the nine mostly used characters (e,n,i,s,r,a,t,d,h) are put in the middle of the buttons, 71% of all keystrokes would be done without dragging. When the 15 mostly used characters (e,n,i,s,r,a,t,d,h,u,l,c,g,m,o) are put in the middle, 90% of all keystrokes would be done without dragging. Unfortunately, the table don't contain special characters. I suggest to put at least the space onto a main position. This mail, up to (and including) this paragraph, has this frequency: pos char cnt % cum% ========================== 1 SPACE: 224 14.79 14.79 2 e: 131 8.65 23.43 3 t: 107 7.06 30.50 4 a: 85 5.61 36.11 5 o: 78 5.15 41.25 6 n: 75 4.95 46.20 7 i: 73 4.82 51.02 8 s: 73 4.82 55.84 9 r: 61 4.03 59.87 10 h: 56 3.70 63.56 11 u: 45 2.97 66.53 12 d: 44 2.90 69.44 13 l: 42 2.77 72.21 14 c: 33 2.18 74.39 15 CR: 33 2.18 76.57 >From this table, we can see two tings: 1. space most definitely needs to be on a main position 2. while the order is different, eight of the nine characters mentioned above are on the first nine positions in the table. BTW: Vi users would probably like to have the colon on a main position. Emacs users would probably like ESC and CRTL-X on a main position, so I guess having it configurable would be the best. Opinions? _______________________________________________ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community