Is It Time To End Our Love Affair With the QWERTY Keyboard? 557
Master Moose writes "Brisbane-based entrepreneur John Lambie currently has in beta an alternative to what he calls the 'dysfunctional' QWERTY keyboard. Given the way the world is abandoning their keyboards for smartphones he sees now as the perfect time to introduce a new layout. He calls his new keyboard Dextr and believes it is the natural progression from using a number pad to enter text — This is especially so in developing countries where users have not grown up with QWERTYs on thier phones. While he is not the first to ever propose an alternate or alphabetical keyboard — Are we locked into QWERTY for familiarity's sake, or as we shift to smaller, more mobile and new devices, is Mr. Lambie's project coming at the right time?"
No (Score:5, Insightful)
No. That is all.
Inertia (Score:5, Insightful)
It didn't change at the transition to the PC from typewriters and it's not going to change now (in any significant way).
Re:Inertia (Score:5, Informative)
It may change in time, but just because someone invents a better keyboard layout, or a more innovative way to type, doesn't mean it will meet common acceptance.
It would have made sense if people adopted the abcdef keyboard (alphabetical), but as most devices are qwerty (or whatever your region uses), they'll remain. People aren't going to flock to buying new keyboards, for home and work, and swap out their cell phones with keypads for newer ones.
Even the shift from regular keyboards to ergonomic never happened, because it was difficult for people to switch back and forth quickly. I got used to it, switching when I'd get on a client's computer. A lot of people had problems trying. If they really stuck with it, they'd buy new keyboards for their home and office, usually out of pocket for the employer.
The biggest migration of keyboard style I can think of is from the old mechanical typewriters, which didn't have the zero or one keys (redundant for "o" and "l") That was an obvious one, since the newer mechanical typewriters did have the full set of numbers, and distinguishing marks on the numerals.
Re:Inertia (Score:5, Insightful)
It would have made sense if people adopted the abcdef keyboard (alphabetical)
Why? Just because it's the most obvious layout, doesn't mean it's the optimal one for typing. At most it's going to make it slightly easier for complete beginners to find keys before they've learned where they are.
I'm not claiming that QWERTY is the best layout for typing- in fact, it's generally accepted that it almost certainly isn't.
But as you say, there have been countless attempts to do alternate layouts, and few have gained much traction. If we're talking about mobile devices (where, after all, people learned to "type" on a non-QWERTY 12-digit keyboard (*)) perhaps sticking with a full keyboard- albeit with different layout- isn't thinking far enough (**), and we should be considering something like Microwriter [wikipedia.org]- which first appeared 30 years ago!
(*) And showed no inclination do use that on a computer
(**) I was going to say "not thinking far enough outside the box" but I really loathe that stupid cliche even though I can't think of anything better. Always found it ironic that "thinking outside the box" is such a cliched, unoriginal, unimaginative, corporate, stuck inside the damn box phrase(!!)
Re:Inertia (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Inertia (Score:5, Insightful)
And putting the vowels in a column will make it difficult to adapt something like Swype to the layout, because it makes a problem Swype has even worse. Suppose you want to type "pit". Using Swype on a qwerty layout, you have to be careful with stopping on the i, because o and u are right next to it, and pot and put are also valid words. With all the vowels in a column, if you're a bit too high, you get "pet", too low = "pot", significantly too high = "pat" and significantly too low = "put". Five valid words distinguished solely by the vertical position of the vowel. There are thousands of other examples. Swype with qwerty has that issue with u, i, & o, (& y) this layout extends the problem to all 5 vowels.
Another problem, an extra two rows of keys on many mobile devices presents a space problem. Even on touchscreen devices, the 4 row layout (3 qwerty + space, shift, etc.) used by Android and iOS takes up a lot of screen space already, adding two more rows means you either make the rows shorter (aggravating the problem above), use up too much screen height, or move the space, shift, enter, etc to the sides of the layout. Either way, you compromise usability even more.
Alphabetic ordered keyboards may initially be faster for those unfamiliar with qwerty, but they're not faster for for anyone experienced with qwerty, even for two-finger typists. My in-dash GPS/nav system uses an alphabetic layout, and it's definitely slower for me than qwerty would be. Of course, as slow as that nav system is to respond, qwerty wouldn't actually be faster, bit it would require less searching and therefore be less distracting and frustrating. The alphabet is useful for ordering/filing, but it bears no relationship to letter frequency or digraph/trigraph patterns, so it doesn't help with typing words.
Since dvorak, colemak, and other optimized layouts haven't really caught on, I'm afraid we'll be living with qwerty and it's international variants for a long time.
Re:Inertia (Score:5, Interesting)
I wouldn't be so sure.
1. Replace keycap letters with e-ink.
2. Allow users to remap keys to their liking.
3. Use whatever layout you want, qwerty, dvorak, abcdef, or whatever this new one is.
The thing that's been keeping qwerty alive is everyone having to learn it. Even if you use dvorak, you still have to learn qwerty because you'll frequently sit down at a physical qwerty keyboard. With the move to virtual keyboards and the development of technology which would allow easy reconfiguration of a physical keyboard (including the letter markings), a lot of that inertia disappears.
It's like I say about GUIs - rather than trying to force everyone into a menu model or a ribbon model, include both. The people who like menus can use the menus, the people who like the ribbon can use the ribbon, and if a menu-user sits at a ribbon-user's computer (or vice versa), a single configuration option should let you switch between the two. We should be adapting computers to match the way we (as individuals) like to work, not expecting individuals to adapt how they work to match one monolithic way all computers work.
Re: (Score:3)
There actually is a keyboard layout [google.com] optimized for swiping. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it really is faster once you learn it.
Re: (Score:3)
No kidding. Dextr is just alphabetic with the vowels in a column. It's stupid.
Actually, it's worse than stupid because the Z key is shoved between the H and the I keys, instead of being at the bottom right corner where you'd expect it to be.
Re:Inertia (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been using Dvorak on the PC for over 10 years now. Until I got my Android phone, all my texting has been done in QWERTY. On my new phone, I decided to try out Dvorak for a bit and I found something horrifying: dvorak on the phone is not as easy as using qwerty.
Re:Inertia (Score:5, Funny)
Thankyou for your valuable insights.
Re:Inertia (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Inertia (Score:5, Insightful)
It would have made sense if people adopted the abcdef keyboard (alphabetical)
Douglas Adams answered this one many years ago [douglasadams.com]:
The principle behind the decision to have an alphabetical keyboard is based on a misunderstanding. I believe that the idea is this: not everybody knows qwerty (it's an odd feeling actually typing qwerty as a word. Try it and you'll see what I mean) but everybody knows the alphabet. This true but irrelevant. People know the alphabet as a one dimensional string, not as a two-dimensional array, so you're going to have to hunt and peck anyway.
Re:Inertia (Score:4, Funny)
it's an odd feeling actually typing qwerty as a word. Try it and you'll see what I mean
The worst is when you actually type it out as 'querty' :/
Re: (Score:3)
It may change in time, but just because someone invents a better keyboard layout, or a more innovative way to type, doesn't mean it will meet common acceptance.
Like text to speech, aka no typing at all.
(Now, imagine yourself dictating your code to your computer...)
Re:Inertia (Score:5, Insightful)
I learned to type on a typewriter. Now I use this keyboard [daskeyboard.com] at work (I do a lot of writing for my job). Since there are no labels on the keys, I can see the wear patterns and they are concentrated around the home row (and space bar) exactly as intended. I suppose the home row makes no sense on virtual keyboards, but then again virtual keyboards make no sense, which is why there are a zillion "swipe" and "predictive" keyboards on the Android market... so, yah, as you say, interta; I already have to deal with f***ing French keyboards, why would I want to complicate my life even more by adding another non-QWERTY keyboard to the mix?
Re:Inertia (Score:5, Insightful)
You think that's bad? I cope on a daily basis with Belgian, French, German, Swiss, US and UK keyboards. Sure some of those are only slight variations, but believe me, it ain't fun.
My opinion: everone migrates to US-International and we're done with it.
Re:Inertia (Score:4, Insightful)
As a Belgian, I abandoned azerty. Qwerty is indeed better for programming. And azerty is for the French language. The Dutch language, spoken by most Belgians, has absolutely no need for a q in the center row. I really don't understand how azerty ever ended up being used in Flanders.
Re:Inertia (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As a Belgian, I abandoned azerty. Qwerty is indeed better for programming. And azerty is for the French language. The Dutch language, spoken by most Belgians, has absolutely no need for a q in the center row. I really don't understand how azerty ever ended up being used in Flanders.
As a French Canadian, I use a QWERTY keyboard since that's the north-american standard. It's probably because of the habit, but the few times I've had to use AZERTY, even to type French text, I absolutely hated it and I can't understand its logic. I can't imagine what it would be like to program with that.
Re:Inertia (Score:5, Interesting)
Hey, I used to be a Belgian... I was born in Antwerp. My native language is Flemish. However, isn't saying "The Dutch language, spoken by most Belgians" is quite a bit misleading? Now, there may be more Flemish people than Walloon people, but saying "most Belgians" is really an exaggeration.
Furthermore, to answer your question why "azerty" is the Belgian keyboard, you have to simply look at your own history. When keyboards got in widespread use, Flanders wasn't the economic powerhouse of Belgium. Back then, it was Wallony with it's coal mines. French was the most important language and was used in business as well as by the bourgeoisie. Sure, now Wallony is the poorer part and Flanders the richer part, but that wasn't always so.
Funnily enough, this is exactly on topic because it's pure history and inertia that makes "azerty" the Belgian layout.
Re: (Score:3)
Maybe he's writing more about beautiful things like fjords, and less about stroking his e-peen.
Re: (Score:3)
"change from Fahrenheit to Celsius"
Why not go all the way and change to Kelvin
Re:No (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No (Score:4, Informative)
Come on Slashdot, how hard it is to know anything outside US?
Pretty hard, apparently.
Even now, in the 21st Century, with our flying cars and Mr. Fusions, /. still doesn't allow the full Latin-1 character set. I can't type a Euro Sign, or a cent or an AE ligature.
WTF /. Get with the times.
Re:No (Score:4, Informative)
Re:No (Score:4, Informative)
Euro: €
Cent:
AE: Æ æ
Incidentally, the "Compose" key functionality in Linux (which you will have to enable, in the GUI or with setxkbmap -option compose:menu (to make the "Menu" key the compose key) is really useful. I typed € with Compose, C, =. AE/Æ was Compose, A, E. Lots of other characters are a couple of keypresses away.)
Re:No (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No (Score:4, Funny)
No, that's called the "hash sign".
This is a pound symbol: £
Fucking yanks.
Re:No (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No (Score:4, Informative)
Replying to my own post because I can.
Here's [ucdenver.edu] a pretty picture of a German keyboard showing some of the other differences that my anglo-centric non-umlaut-needing mind had blanked out.
Re:No (Score:5, Informative)
That's a compelling argument. I would add to it but TFA seems to be blatant slashvertizing. Dextr is some shitty app they are trying to promote.
Re: (Score:2)
That's a compelling argument
The fact is that nobody gives a damn about their keyboard layout. Once you're used to yours it works and that's all there is to know about it.
Are there people out there that really think they can invent a new layout and popularize it by posting it to slashdot? Some dudes are just living in their very own universe...
Re: (Score:3)
dextr should be called the abc layout.
it looks like it uses more of the screen too, so there's that.
Re: (Score:3)
Or, it could be called the "5x5 abc layout", since other abc layouts have existed longer than even qwerty.
Or, it could be called the "layout that no one asked for, but got anyway".
I'll add to it (Score:3)
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
No. That is all.
How the hell did this get insightful?
the problem with texting on smartphones isn't the keyboard layout, it's that big fat thumbs sometimes hit the button next to the intended one. While qwerty is no better than any other layout on a smartphone, it IS a great layout on pc keyboards which is where I do most of my typing, so why should I learn two layouts when the one I use most often is at worst equally bad as any other?
Re:No (Score:5, Informative)
How the hell did this get insightful?
Because it references Betteridge's Law of Headlines [wikipedia.org] which states any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no. The rest was just filler to get passed the lameness filter.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Reading Comp. (Score:3)
Re:No (Score:5, Informative)
...QWERTY is a HORRIBLE layout and was designed to BE horrible, to slow down typists writing on mechanical typewriters.
From Wikipedia:
"A popular myth is that QWERTY was designed to "slow down" typists though this is incorrect – it was designed to prevent jams while typing at speed, allowing typists to type faster."
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that QWERTY was designed for a typewriter, ie with the most-used keys farthest apart, probably is a benefit for virtual keyboards (and I'm saying this as someone who exclusively uses dvorak for regular typing). If you have the vowels all in the same place (like this, or like dvorak), you're going to get a lot more typos that the OS can't fix for you (eg "in" vs "on", since they're both valid choices). Of course, "in" vs "on" is still an issue on qwerty, so we could definitely do better, but it's an entirely different optimization decision than with a physical 10-finger keyboard.
Of course, it doesn't seem like any typing optimizations at all went into this arbitrarily-touted keyboard, so no comment there.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Actually, the best solution to that problem is the Kinesis ergonomic keyboards. Ctrl, Alt and Win/Command are thumb actuated keys, as are return and backspace. I'm a long-time emacs user, and it solved a lot of those pinky issues for me.
Not cheap, though. Still, worth it if you want to preserve your hands.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I've been using a custom keyboard layout for years, and I do find it better than QWERTY's default.
For the curious, top left to bottom right:
`12345@67890#
jwertqkylp[]
asdfghuio-'
\zxcvbnm,./
Familiar enough to be able to swap between the two, but much more comfortable to type on.
Re:No (Score:4, Informative)
Betteridge's law in action.
Re:No (Score:5, Funny)
Is it time to stop ending titles with question marks?
Re: (Score:3)
Of course not!
Re:No (Score:4, Insightful)
No?
Leave my keyboard alone! (Score:5, Insightful)
For the love of all that is holy, stop wasting time trying to 'fix' something that is not broken!
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Leave my keyboard alone! (Score:4, Insightful)
However, the problem was as people learned how to use QWERTY keyboards, their typing speed increased to a point where it doesn't matter how the keys are located. Typing speed remains nearly unaffected, just as long as people know where the keys are.
Re:Leave my keyboard alone! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, but alphabetical order isn't one of them.
Re:Leave my keyboard alone! (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't. Alphabetical order is only good for people who need to search for the keys. Anyone who has even moderate typing ability does not need to look at the keys. So placing the keys in a way that takes into account letter frequency and doublet frequency and human dexterity would seem to be the way to go - that's a complicated problem which I would bet does not have alphabetical order as an optimal solution.
As I type this looking at the screen and not the keyboard, I realize that my biggest problem is getting my hands misaligned when returning to the home position - this is due to my tendency to not use my pinkie fingers which mean I need to move side-to-side more. I either need a keyboard that helps me get back home, or I need to learn to use all my fingers when they are supposed to - hey, I used a pinky for an "a" - go me!
Re: (Score:3)
The pointer nubby on a Thinkpad laptop is also useful, although I have yet to find a keyboard that replicates the feel properly. On the laptop, I never have to take my hands off the home row in order to move the mouse slightly in order to hit a dialog button. (The Unicomp Model M has a nubby, but feels too much like a joystick.)
Re: (Score:3)
Not for mobile phones (this thing is for Android), since you typically want to hold it in one hand while typing with the index finger of the other. Or if you're lucky enough to have an old T9 device, typing with the thumb of the hand you're holding the phone in (which is still possible with touch screens, but sucks big hairy goat balls). If I wanted to bother with reinventing the keyboard layout, I'd look at how to get something like Swype or SlideIT to work more efficiently and less error-prone using the t
Re: (Score:3)
Change the keyboard layout and it sure as hell WILL be broken.
Re:Leave my keyboard alone! (Score:5, Insightful)
For ten-fingered input, the maximum gains in typing performance brought on by a new keyboard layout are minimal; one or two percent at best. As long as your hands can reach the whole keyboard, the difference in time it takes for any given keystroke is negligible. The real benefit that comes from, for example, Dvorak vs. QWERTY, is a reduction in stress on the hands, and hence RSI. Saying that QWERTY "optimized" typewriter jamming would be overly generous; the improvement over the traditional alphabetical key ordering was only performed to a modest extent, and the typists of the day were not proficient touch-typists as we are now.
In the case of thumb-typing, however, great improvement is possible. The Metropolis keyboard [psu.edu], for example, was generated stochastically by optimising an energy function based on letter pair frequency, and provides a 40% typing speed increase over QWERTY.
Re:Leave my keyboard alone! (Score:4, Funny)
Saying that QWERTY "optimized" typewriter jamming would be overly generous...
[sarcasm] Apparently it's not just for typewriters. Microsoft said the reason my computer crashed so much was because I was using Dvorak, resulting in crossed bits that would become bound together and were too big to fit through my computer's 16-bit processor. They said this would happen less if I reverted to QWERTY because they keys were optimized to limit crossed bits. I became skeptical of this answer after it continued to happen with 32-bit Windows, given that the processor could now handle more bits than there were letters in the alphabet. [/sarcasm]
Speed gains (Score:5, Interesting)
For what it's worth, I once spent a good deal of time testing this hypothesis. I spent a lot of time researching optimized layouts, picked one, and used it for a solid year - parallel to the QWERTY layout that I was still using at work. After a year, I was equally proficient with both (I could touch-type either at will, same error-rate, etc.), and I ran a number of tests.
The results were quite consistent: about a 10% speed increase (from 60wpm to 66 wpm), no significant difference in the error rates. For what it's worth, at that point I decided for QWERTY. That's what most keyboards in the West are based on, and for a 10% gain in speed, you have the irritation of switching back-and-forth all the time. If you don't type a lot on both layouts, your speed-gain on one quickly becomes a massive speed-penalty on the other.
Note: there is a nice little open-source application [sourceforge.net] out there that will let you take your personal keyboard layout with you whereever you go. Unfortunately, it currently only supports Windows.
For smart phones, the situation is obviously different. If you want to be able to type quickly, you pretty much need a predictive keyboard (something like SwiftKey, for example). Beyond that, it's simply a matter of being able to find the "keys" quickly. For anyone who also uses a normal keyboard, that means QWERTY.
Re:Leave my keyboard alone! (Score:4, Insightful)
Amazing how he has the only solution! (Score:5, Informative)
It's not like there already are better keyboard options out there. Dvorak, I weep for your absence in everyday life.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I would recommend Colemak. It is easier to learn for those that know qwerty already, about as efficient as dvorak with respect to hand movement and it is not as annoying with the placement of the L and the S key, which is sort of fundamental when you work with UNIX-like systems.
Re: (Score:2)
Have you a broken pinkie? 'ls' is really easy to enter so I'm not sure what you mean by 'annoying'.
Re:Amazing how he has the only solution! (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/221/was-the-qwerty-keyboard-purposely-designed-to-slow-typists [straightdope.com]
"Baloney, say the authors of the article you enclose, S.J. Liebowitz and Stephen Margolis. They point out that (1) the research demonstrating the superiority of the Dvorak keyboard is sparse and methodologically suspect; (2) a sizable body of work suggests that in fact the Dvorak offers little practical advantage over the QWERTY; (3) at least one study indicates that placing commonly used keys far apart, as with the QWERTY, actually speeds typing, since you frequently alternate hands; and (4) the QWERTY keyboard did not become a standard overnight but beat out several competing keyboards over a period of years. Thus it may be fairly said to represent the considered choice of the marketplace. It saddens me to know I helped to perpetuate the myth of Dvorak superiority, but I will sleep better at night knowing I have rectified matters at last."
Totally agree on spreading the keys apart. Easier on the fingers.
Kinda like in gaming where if you repeatedly press keys in almost the same location, repeatedly, you start getting RSI.
Re:Amazing how he has the only solution! (Score:5, Interesting)
Alternate hands is much, much, much more common on Dvorak than QWERTY. I know this because it was one of my major frustrations with the Dvorak layout--all sorts of things I used to be able to type one-handed, I no longer could. I've used Dvorak every day for almost 10 years now, and I still don't have any one-handed combos unless you count "ls", which I don't, because I never need to type that one-handed, and it uses the mouse hand anyway.
Try it out--just take random words, and see if they're typable one-handed on each layout. Tally the results, stop when you're satisfied.
Actually, screw it, here:
Re: (Score:3)
Oh yeah:
I don't care what keyboard layout you use, I really don't care which layout "wins" (Dvorak has already lost), and I really, really don't care about the irrelevant and probably bullshit "origin stories" of either one, but saying that QWERTY promotes using alternating hands is just factually incorr
Re: (Score:3)
aspell master list is not exactly a good way to count alternate hand use. You'd be better off using a word frequency table.
In a pinch, comparing letter frequency (etoainshrdlu) by actual percentage against the layouts.
btw, I always used the right hand for b because the index finger is closest to it. Removing that from your list drops the number to 1770 on my system.
Personally though I wasn't thinking too much of alternating hands, but rather which fingers I'm using and whether they move up or down to type.
Re: (Score:3)
That's just as likely to be due to you changing layouts than any inherent benefit of the layout. If you had grown up with Dvorak, gotten RSI, and switched to Qwerty, you might feel similar relief.
Betteridge's Law of Headlines (Score:5, Insightful)
For soft keyboards? Why not? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be able to "plug in" any text input widget you choose with a decently designed device. It would make supporting languages other than English a hell of a lot easier, and it would let people opt for things like stylus/printing interfaces instead of virtual keyboards.
Frankly I'd be shocked if the Qwerty soft keyboards were hard coded -- companies would be locking themselves out of non-English markets, and that's not good global thinking or marketing.
Myself, I hate virtual keyboards of all kinds. I'd much rather use a stylus with handwriting recognition.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know about iPhone, but on Android it's trivial to install a new input method and there are lots available, many which don't resemble keyboards at all.
Re:For soft keyboards? Why not? (Score:4, Informative)
It's not just the layout that can be replaced on android, you can use wildly different text input choices. Swiftkey has insanely good error correction and word prediction by a combination of an analysis of what you've written into your phone before and a heat map that invisibly adjusts the key position to be more consistent with where you actually hit it (if you always hit the area between 'e' and 'r' when you mean to hit 'e' it will begin register that area as 'e'). Swipe works by dragging from one letter to the next. Various voice recognition apps (including Google's) works through the same interface. And those are just the relatively obvious keyboard styles, there are other text input choices that are really trying new things. This [appstorm.net] is wildly out of date but still provide a glimpse of the kinds of things you can try out on Android.
OCD. (Score:2)
Looks like an exercise in OCD, not in design.
Getting the vowels to line up has little use in written language, but it might make an OCD a touch less stressed.
Why do we need an advertisment for Dextr? (Score:5, Informative)
Android has been a literal playground for new keyboard designs. QWERTY is winning so far, but there's no reason to push one standard over another because we aren't tied to a physical keyboard anymore. I have 8 keyboards installed on my phone. Most QWERTY, but some, like 8pen, are radically different and focus on actual typing speed.
The keyboard in the article is
1) not made for speed
2) fucking ugly
3) takes up a crazy amount of screen real-estate
Re:Why do we need an advertisment for Dextr? (Score:4)
I worked on one of those keyboards you probably used for about 2 years (Swype). To quote my CEO when asked about some new competitor who bought some talk in the Android press- "non-qwerty non-starty". Nobody is even going to try a non-qwerty keyboard. Even most techies won't.
probably less relevant (Score:2)
as more robust, built-in voice-to-text is disseminating so rapidly now on phones and tablets, and Dextr appears to target those devices. For those of us who already type quickly, I can't see why we'd want to learn a new format. For those just learning to type, I could see wanting to do something better than QWERTY (Dvorak).
He will follow in the footsteps of (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
or a small number of dedicated users who cannot understand why everyone else doesn't want to switch to their layout.
You just accidentally described the Linux UI war.
How about a real "benefit"... (Score:2)
chorded keyboard that allow sight-free touchscreen typing? That's an improvement. Changing the keyboard layout to something better? That's called Dvorak.
whad"s thi fuss? (Score:5, Funny)
I, fir one, don"f cee whad thi fuss es apout.
I'n abendonned QWERTY wonks ago amd I'n doung jist fane.
What's the point? (Score:2)
swype and slideit (Score:3)
Need to change the software not the keyboard (Score:3)
Don't worry about changing the $5 disposable mush-board hardware. Worry about changing software. I would imagine cursor movement in VI or nethack is pretty agonizing on dvorak layout.
I've been hearing this stuff since I saw ads for dvorak replacement keyboards in 1982. Probably has been around longer. Nothing WRT this argument has really changed since then. Unimpressed.
Chorded Keyboards (Score:5, Interesting)
If there's one thing that deserves to make a comeback in this mobile world, it's chorded keyboards. QWERTY sucks on mobile devices because it takes up too much space, especially a physical board. On the other hand, you could probably put enough keys (say, three for each hand) on the back of a mobile device to make them practical physical keyboards without taking up valuable real estate that could be used for the screen.
Re: (Score:3)
But the chorded keyboard is not self explanatory. It is reasons like that that cause things to flop, it is why nobody ever likes predictive text unless you do like it, in which case you like it very much! I remember someone talking about a 'revolutionary' typing corrector for a smartphone keyboard, when it was just doing the same thing as predictive text and guessing what letter you wanted from where your fingers were mashing the screen.
People's biggest hurdle learning to type is that qwerty jumbles up the
Fingertip sized? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who's fingertip? a four year old girl's fingers or a my sausage sized fingers? Finger tip size varies a lot.
The question is wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
"Have you stopped beating your wife?"
We don't "love" qwerty. It's what we use. Little more than that. The learning curve is horrible, but once you got it, learning anything after that would be more painful than it would be worth.
We could also learn Esperanto (Score:4, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto [wikipedia.org]
The English language has all sorts of grammar, spelling, and pronunciation problems. It's a nasty difficult to learn mix of germanic and romance language pronounciation and word derivations. Take the word "Sure". Where is the "H" in "sure"? Speaking of "where", why is it not "ware"? And what the bleep is up with "cough", "dough", and "plough"? Ridiculous nonsense, horrible language with too many idiosyncratic oddities to learn.
And yet it remains an international standard for business. Why? History, that's why.
And that history locks the language in this role is the deciding factor, regardless of how much more intelligently designed, more easily learned, more easily understood, that Esperanto is.
And same applies to the QWERTY keyboard. I am certain there are more intelligent designs out there, like the dvorak:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard [wikipedia.org]
And so why hasn't the dvorak caught on? And why won't this new keyboard catch on? Historical lock in, that's why.
Re:We could also learn Esperanto (Score:4, Interesting)
the grammar nazi's kid sister: the analogy literalist
i swear, every time someone posts an analogy on slashdot, somebody has to get pedantic with the analogy
there IS such a thing as bad analogies, but why esperanto isn't spoken is a good analogy as to why the dvorak or any other nonQWERTY keyboard won't take off: historical lock in
THAT'S the analogy. get it? historical lock in
but you go and take a literalist approach to the analogy, and think it means something to point out an analogy is not the same equivalency. no: your point means nothing. really. it just means you are being pedantic
we understand an analogy has its limits. ok? everyone can see this. it is an easy, and pointless, exercise to point out where two examples are not the same. the point is: where are they the same? and does that say something useful?
slashdot, please listen:
pointing out where two examples are not analogous, UNLESS that difference counteracts the parts that are analogous, is USELESS
dude, you missed a good joke (Score:3)
you should have just said:
"i'm an esperanto speaking dvorak keyboard user, you insensitive clod!"
The Dexter Keyboard (Score:4, Funny)
Followup question (Score:3)
New keyboards aren't for us (Score:3)
The next or next-next generation is who is going to determine what new keyboard wins out. As an old-school mouse fps player I first derided and now am simply amazed people can play fps with any accuracy on joystick, but it makes sense that with enough precision and enough training it would work for people.
The same with texting, I never got the number pad type "type with both thumbs" style, but kids caught on and learned all the key combinations and it got big, then they had contests to see how fast people could text on them. Then they rolled out smartphones and everyone went back to qwerty soft keyboards but still the idea was there that there was a new means of input.
I don't think there will be an invented "better input method' though. Usually this stuff catches on by accident, or by repeated incremental refinements until it's naturally integrated into peoples lives. Using the joystick example, imagine someone trying to play an FPS with an atari or NES controller. While the phone layout hasn't changed for ages, I can't really see people texting on the old analog cellphones from the 80's and 90's, the buttons were made not for tactile feedback but to be reliable and keep the dirt out, you would quickly get tired and be frustrated at how hard the button had to be pressed and the accuracy.
Little experiment (Score:3)
On your handheld of choice add a regional keyboard you are not familiar with. Say if you are American, use a French or German keyboard. If European vice versa.
Type an e-mail or note. Note how you have no problem finding the keys unlike on a full size keyboard where you keep having to searching for the right keys.
Apparently at the touch screen handheld size, the keyboard is small enough to fit in your entire field of vision so that the actual placement of the keys is not critical.
It is possible that a physical keyboard layout at that size is important but for touch screens it seems to be irrelevant.
The ideal layout (Score:4, Insightful)
The ideal smartphone layout would move letters that have similar placements in words as far apart from one another as possible.
Bat
Bet
Bit
Bot
But
That's a pretty trivial example, but it takes no effort to come up with examples where letters get confused for one another and a predictive text system has no way of knowing whether you meant to do that or not. I type 'of' or 'if' each in place of the other about a dozen times a day. It makes me nuts.
The whole keyboard is trivially reachable, so I don't think that it's worth worrying about letter frequency and how fast you can move your fingers to type. We should be trying to make the keyboard properly enhance and support predictive text systems. The faster you can type out--without errors--the first recognisable part of a word, the faster the autocorrect system can make a guess for you. Don't fight it, USE it.
Autocorrect is only makes ridiculous mistakes right now because of the way that we've got our letters grouped together. We end up sending it confusing cues, so of course it picks strange words.
This 'dextr' layout looks terrible. Not only is it huge, it doesn't actually solve the problem. The vowels are cleverly stacked on top of one another, which is probably going to lead to just as many accidental vowel replacements as before, just different kinds. Letters that can often replace one another in words are still right next to each other.
I believe there could be a better texting keyboard than qwerty, but this sure isn't it.
FITALY (Score:3)
Re:cold dead hands! (Score:4, Funny)
But how do you feel about your keyboard?
Re: (Score:3)
I am currently switching from QWERTY to QWERTZ and can't stand QWERTZ for programming.
Stuff like {} and [] needs ALTGR + 7,8,9 or 0 and a SHIFT + , for a line endings (;). It is an unnecessary strain on my poor fingers and it shows that QWERTZ was intended to write letters, nothing more.
It took me an hour to get used to the changed position of some of the letters but I am still cursing the keyboard when I write code. Unfortunately I could only get my new laptop with QWERTZ so I am forced to adapt now.
Re: (Score:3)
just use whatever layout, and don't look at the keys (or just overwrite them with a marker). I would never adapt a new layout just because the keyboard tells me too :)