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Hardware

Could a Pen Replace the Keyboard? 358

Posted by CmdrTaco from the why-the-hell-not dept.
theluckman writes "Reuters has this story on how new devices like "digital pens" could possibly replace keyboards as primary data entry devices. Maybe so, but I would need my pen to make cool clicking sounds."
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Could a Pen Replace the Keyboard? More

Could a Pen Replace the Keyboard?

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  • not for me! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by noser ( 114367 ) on Wednesday April 03, 2002 @12:10PM (#3277190)


    After all these years of typing, I can write way faster and more accurately with a keyboard than I could with a pen. My handwriting is for shit these days. And I couldn't imagine trying to write code with a pen!


    • Oh, then you'll want our new digital pen with a full QWERTY keyboard embedded in the clip.
    • True dat. I can type probably twice as fast as I can write. Plus, my handwriting is nearly illegible at fast speeds. Even I can barely read it.

      • Re:not for me! (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Geez. I wonder if I spend too much time on my handwriting. I clocked it with a stopwatch once on "the quick red fox..."
        and I could barely hit 20wpm cursive, a little slower printed.

        I can type at 90-95.
        • The correct phrase is the "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dogs" What is special about this phrase is that hits every character in the english alphabet. If you use a red fox then you miss b, w, and n.
      • I couldn't hang. I can't write W S A or D fast enough to avid getting fragged.
    • I think all of these latest innovations in handwriting recognition and "Tablet" PCs are basically aimed at an older market that doesn't have typing ability. Handwriting is a step *back* from typing. I would love to be able to use a keyboard to take tests in college, because my hand cramps up so much... simply replacing the paper with a PDA or Tablet is utterly useless to me.

    • Re:not for me! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mark_lybarger ( 199098 ) on Wednesday April 03, 2002 @12:14PM (#3277221)
      exactly! until the pen learns itself to write 60 wpm it's useless.

      voice recognition software is where i see major strides coming from (that and a good education everywhere on correct phonetics). i've heard that most people talk at 100 wpm (though i'm positive i've clocked my wife rambling twice that speed)

      • Re:not for me! (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Xerithane ( 13482 )
        The average speed of talking is 125wpm, while the average speed of writing is 55wpm.

        The thing that works very well for me, I can type around 140wpm (All Hail Mavis Beacon) so talking has become a mostly inefficient method of communication. However, I've found most of the time while speaking I say something stupid I wish I wouldn't have said -- while typing something out I can at least backspace it out. Amen for the backspace.
      • voice recognition software is where i see major strides coming from... i've heard that most people talk at 100 wpm

        Until we completely foul up a phrase. Then it's, "back-back-back-back-back-back-back-back-back-back -back-back-back-back"

        Try to say that faster than a keyboard. ;)
      • voice recognition software is where i see major strides coming from

        Voice recognition has some problems. One of which, as you eluded to, is the difficulty posed by different accents. The other, more unsurmountable obstacle to voice recognition becomming the preferred method for user input is that computers are often used in close proximity to each other. Imagine an office setting where everyone is talking to their computer...having worked in a call center, it wouldn't be fun.

        The more promising technology that I see eventually replacing the keyboard is those sensors that monitor your nevous impulses (I remember playing a demo of this bowling game where you put the device on your finger and then just think right or left and the ball goes in that direction). If one of those could be made to send as many different inputs as a keyboard is currently capable of, it would make using a computer much easier.
        • i'm imagining a setting of a meeting room where a pc is transcribing all that's going on and can spit it out for everyone after the meeting. or a classroom where students can have not just notes taken but the entire lecture transcribed. of course there's probably DMCA implications in this use as oppose to audio tape/video tapes, but that's what you get when mickey mouse forks over some dough to them law-yer on the hill.
        • Another showstopper for me is: With voice recogition, if it mis-recognises It's still spelled correctly

          Meaning if you're gather a LOT of stuff, it's very easy to miss something transliterated in the middle of the document. Not good if it's a legal brief.

          By the time you've transcribed the text, gone back an read it and formatted it, you might as well have typed it out to begin with.
      • "voice recognition software is where i see major strides coming from"

        Not likely for me either. Try speaking out the following:

        public class Something extends SomethingElse implements Some, More, Somethings, {
        public static final String DOODLE = "DOODLE THIS";
        private int _pick_me;
        private int _no_pick_me;

        public void speakThis(String input) {
        Voiceout vo = new com.dragon.output.VoiceOutputDevice().getInstance( );
        vo.speak(input);
        }

        public static void main(String[] args) {
        try {
        Something _some = new Something();
        _some.speakThis("Blah");
        catch(Exception err) {
        System.out.println(err.getMessage());
        err.printStackTrace();
        }
        }
        }
        }

        And that's a simple example. Now try to talk out the kernel source and you really start having some fun with trying to get voice to keep up with the keyboard.

    • Re:not for me! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Sarin ( 112173 ) on Wednesday April 03, 2002 @12:16PM (#3277255) Homepage Journal
      Yup. The article primarely mentions about mobile devices like palmtops and mobile phones.

      Well you must have a surface to write on, I don't want to carry a hell-of-a-large mobile phone with me, so I imagine you could also write on a table or whatever, most of the time I don't have a flat surface closeby when I need to put something in my phone, so that's not really handy.

      With palmtops, I thought most of them already had this feature.

      To replace a regular keyboard/mouse combo sounds quite stupid: I can't imagine writing myself a "4" everytime I want to switch to a rocket-launcher.
    • Lessee....
      I can type for hours and hours on end, barely stopping to go to the bathroom and drink beverage, and my hands and wrists are none the sorer. I can do a modest 75 wpm at max speeds, even while using all the !@#$%^&*( keys.

      or....

      I can use the crap entry device, the pen, and write for about an hour before my hand cramps up and do about 15 wpm legibly.

      Thanks, but no thanks for this crap invention. Just because its hard to make technologically doesn't make it a good idea. Now, gimme the shunt, and we'll see....

    • As someone who is semi-bilingual (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ProfBooty ( 172603 ) on Wednesday April 03, 2002 @12:22PM (#3277325)
      For inputting the english language, i can type far faster than i write, and i believe most people who ultilize computers on a day to day basis can.

      However, when I type in japanese, it takes me a lot longer to type the character phonetically and then select the proper character from a list to use. Pen input of complex characters would be signifigantly faster because, assuming the character regonizer is good enough, you wouldnt need to select the character from a list.

      The other main advantage of a pen is that you need not lift your hand off the keyboard to reach the mouse to manipulate a GUI. Granted for a "power user" you would have a number of hotkeys/shortcuts handy on the keyboard, but for someone who is already using the pen, its just point and click. Its also easier for someone who is just learning to navigate a computer as it is just like using a mouse.
      • However, when I type in japanese, it takes me a lot longer to type the character phonetically and then select the proper character from a list to use. Pen input of complex characters would be signifigantly faster because, assuming the character regonizer is good enough, you wouldnt need to select the character from a list.

        Having done university research and worked in Japan, I've witnessed people whose primary method of inputting text is using the kana-kanji henkan method of entering in the phonetic equivalent of a kanji character then selecting its proper kanji character. For people who have used this all their computing lives, it's not at all a very slow method of input but, pretty much, as fast as a lot of type English.

        As for me, my kanji handwriting skill is pretty abysmal. It would take me far longer to scribble something onto a penpad so that it's recognizable than it would to take me to use the kana-kanji henkan method of entering Japanese. In other words, I can type Japanese a lot faster than I can write it, just as is the case with my writing in English.
        • When i was in university in japan, i found it took me a lot longer to input characters phonetically and select them while using the macintosh. The main downside I found to using the word processor all the time was that my skill in writing kanji (and even remembering how to write them) decreased as my reliance/skill on the word processor increased. Its gotten to the point where of the 1000 or so characters i can read/comprehend, i probably can only remember how to write properly 3-400 of them anymore.

          I found when i used the zaurus back around 99 when i was in japan, it did an acceptable job of character recognition. I'd like to try the input/character recognition on my ipaq for japanese to see how well it works.
      • Optical character recognition of text that's been scanned at optimum conditions (high quality scan of mint, original page of text), is hard enough. Even the best OCR packages available off the shelf are only 98-99% successful in these conditions, and that's for straightforward English text, which has comparitively few characters that are easily distinguishable and with no accents.

        Many asian languages have character sets that are orders of magnitude harder to recognise, because there are so many more characters in each set and because there are so many more characters in each set that are similiar (which makes it harder to differentiate between them). A few such languages includes Japanese, Chinese, Hindu and Urdu.

        Now recognition of near-perfect type is one thing. Recognition of an individual's pen strokes is another thing altogether.

        One of the reasons why the Apple Newton PDA failed so miserably was its promise of usable handwriting recognition. Unfortunately, that promise turned out to be more a case of wishful thinking. Having to rewrite characters many times before the Newton would correctly interpret them was a big turn-off for potential Newton purchasers.

        On the other hand, Palm got it right when it went with Grafitti. An easy to learn equivalent character set that emphasised fast and easy entry rather than slow and complex recognition.

        I'm sure that there are Grafitti equivalents for many Asian languages (it's hard to imagine that Sony don't have a japanese one for their Clie range) but, again, the large character set problem doesn't disappear (although context sensitive recognition algorithms can help.)

        Individual handwriting recognition technology for the masses may still be a pipe dream. Let's face it, we all know people that have trouble reading their own handwriting let alone that of other people! Yet we expect a PC to be able to handle such tasks at a reasonable speed? (60 words per minute is probably something in the order of 240-300 characters per minute.) Frankly, I just don't see it happening yet.

        Bottom line: if you want fast, accurate pen recognition then your probably going to have to learn how to write grafitti or a similar.

        • Re:Is current character recognition up to the task (Score:4, Interesting)

          by RevAaron ( 125240 ) <revaaron.hotmail@com> on Wednesday April 03, 2002 @01:30PM (#3277814) Homepage
          One of the reasons why the Apple Newton PDA failed so miserably was its promise of usable handwriting recognition. Unfortunately, that promise turned out to be more a case of wishful thinking.

          Heh. Good thing you're not modded up, or you'd be perpetuating this myth- one that is especially blindly spouted here on slashdot.

          The first few models of the Newton's HWR sucked. Pretty bad. After a year and a half, Newton OS 2.0 came out, with new HWR recognizers, and it got it right. Far faster input than Graffiti or other character and stroke based methods.

          Fortunately, real HWR didn't die with the Newton. ParaGraph's CalliGrapher [phatware.com] exists for WinCE, providing a more efficient, real HWR based, means of inputting on a PDA. There is also a version for the Windoze on the desktop called PenOffice. Unfortunately there is no such thing as real HWR for the Mac or Linux platforms though.

          Having used both a Newton 2100u and an iPAQ with CalliGrapher, both a Newton and Palm device with Graffiti (originated on the Newton), Jot, the built-in character recognizer in PocketPC, as well as various programmable character recognition means, I've quite a bit of experience with HWR in the real world.

          It appears that you don't have experience with much in the way of HWR, except perhaps on a Palm. That's fine, but it isn't very scientific to pull stuff out of your rear without any
          experience to back it.

          After 3 months of using my Newton and iPAQ (w/ CalliGrapher), I found I can get between 40-60 WPM. That was not counting any words fewer than three characters, so that number may be higher, but I wasn't sure how to determine WPM for sure. That's including making corrections. Around 99% accuracy for words, 90% for punctuation.

          I tend to get higher WPMs on the Newton, mostly because the larger screen accomdates more words at a time, and that the recognition is rolling, rather than happening at once when I lift the pen. That is, if I write "hello my name is armondo," it will have recognized as text "hello my name" by the time I am writing the word "armondo."

          Individual handwriting recognition technology for the masses may still be a pipe dream.

          Try a real HWR system for a while, meaning a month or two. The same amount of time is required to get used to Graffiti, so I think that's fair. During that time, correct it. The real HWR schemes of which I know train a neural net against your corrections, and learn your HWR style over time.
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re:Is current character recognition up to the task (Score:4, Interesting)

          by mughi ( 32874 ) on Wednesday April 03, 2002 @02:24PM (#3278203)
          Optical character recognition of text that's been scanned at optimum conditions (high quality scan of mint, original page of text), is hard enough....


          Many asian languages have character sets that are orders of magnitude harder to recognise, because there are so many more characters in each set...


          That's where you are wrong. OCR might be more difficult, but this is not OCR. That's even a bit of what allows grafitti to work. The whole point is that it's recognition of the drawing of a character.

          In those 'harder' languages, the people are very touchy when it comes to writing the language. Each of those complex characters has an exact number of strokes, with the order and even direction exactingly specified. Given all that, recognition of Kanji characters turns out to be much easier than of English characters (just think of how many ways one can draw the lower-case letter 'a').

          That's one of the reasons that PDA have been a huge success in Japan. The Sharp Zarus line has been huge over there, due much in part to their successful Kanji recognition.

          One could almost argue that grafiti is a success exactly because it applied the order of Asian language writing onto English characters.

    • My handwriting is for shit these days.

      I'll have to jump in and second this. I've always had pretty poor handwriting, but the past (better part of a) decade or so, I've been finding myself barely able to write at all. I've had a keyborad under my fingers since I was 8 or 9 or so (Commadore 64, w00t!) and I'm 28 now.

      I don't consider myself a good typist, but I do consider myself a good "keyboarder". I personally feel that is two different things. I feel it far more "natural" to type than I do hand write. On top of that, I feel it more natural to hit CTRL+ESC to push the Start button than I think it is to click on the damn thing.

      Maybe that's part of why I like *NIX as muh as I do now. I miss the old DOS (Commadore, Apple ][, OS/2, whatever) days. I feel typing is more natural to me than writing is.

      Maybe I'm just a geek, though...
      :-)
    • And I couldn't imagine trying to write code with a pen!

      Actually, I think coding could work with a tablet system, but not the obvious way. Keyboard use has been bothering me lately, so I've switched to using vim and learning all of the tricks. That way, I do the minimal amount of typing and my fingers rarely leave the home row. I've realized that only a small amount of the keypresses are actually spelling words; most of them are magic sequences to move around or paste snippets.

      Tablet computing could use gestures to a similar effect. A direct port of vim wouldn't work; I've used it on my iPaq handheld with character recognition, and misrecognition in command mode is a recipie for disaster. Instead, a whole new gesture-based text editor would have to be developed. Instead of focusing on individual characters, the editor would focus on higher level tasks and keywords selected by gestures.

      Another thing to consider would be replacing the pen with something more comforatable to hold, maybe similar to a conductor's baton. Keeping your fingers pinched around a pen barrel is uncomfortable, but there's no reason to keep doing that if you're not physically dispensing ink.

    • Hmm... After thinking about this, I think that the real trends will be three-fold--

      1: Better keyboards (One CAN type with Dvorak keyboards faster than one can talk-- Remember that QWERTY kb's were designed to slow typing speed so that manual typewriters would not jam).

      2: Pens for compact devices (who wants to carry around/set up a keyboard for a PDA?) amd for some artistic input (light pens have been here for a long time and are much better than other means of drawing input, IMO. Mouse input in a drawing program is too much like etch-a-sketch ;)

      3: Voice recognition for general operations (not writing code-- writing code using voice recogniction would probably be slower than using a qwerty kb).
    • Programming was designed around a keyboard. For programming, I will probably never give up my keyboard. However, sometimes I write things that are not code, like math. I have become speedy with LaTeX, but it still takes several keystrokes to make an integral symbol. If I am using a WYSIWYG editor, it takes a mouse trek, forcing me to switch between the keyboard and mouse (very slow). With a pen, it is a quick stroke, and I won't need to switch between two different input devices to input a single expression. We probably won't be able to make integrals right out of the box, but I remain hopeful.

      The key words and phrases here are "cheap", "wireless", and "works on a variety of surfaces". It could be a practical tool for those of us who work in math-intensive fields.
    • Of course this is for portables, not notebooks / desktops. Where you have space for a real keyboard, it's always going to be faster.

      I would prefer a combined voice / stylus input, but in some cases you don't want to use voice either. Meetings / classrooms for example. Imagine if everyone was taking notes by talking into their Palm's :-)

      Pen input is slow. What about a set of VR gloves to allow a "virtual" keyboard? Combined with a pair of "Heads Up Display" glasses, that would be the ultimate. On the other hand, a society where everyone is walking around talking to themselves with their hands out in front wiggling their fingers would be pretty strange....

      (visions of zombies...)

  • Not while we have carpal tunnel (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Remus Shepherd ( 32833 ) <remus@panix.com> on Wednesday April 03, 2002 @12:13PM (#3277215) Homepage
    You think you have bad carpal tunnel syndrome from a keyboard? Wait until you have to write 5,000 lines of code using a pen. I can't use a pen for long periods (and I don't have a PDA) because my hand cramps up after only a minute. There's no way I could do my job with one.

    I'm afraid that we're stuck with keyboards in the office for the forseeable future. Even speech recognition won't work in such an environment, where a cube neighbor may be simulataneously trying to get his PC to recognize *his* speech just four feet away.
  • My handwriting sucks. It always has. Were it not for the keyboard and 99.9% of all my writing done on the keyboard, I would be considered 50% illiterate. Please...don't make me go back to writing by hand.

    Granted, all kinds of nifty code would have to be in place to recognize handwriting, but even so...I like the keyboard.
  • Trying playing Quake with a pen. Or transfering all your shortcut keys to pen strokes. Or "writing" a god damn semi-colon.

    Cool idea. It'll never happen.
  • Once you get used to typing quickly, a keyboard is the fastest, most efficient text entry device out there. For apple users, and even some pc and linux gurus, keyboard shortcuts are something that are way too valuable to be replaced.

    Basically, we're going to have to come up with something completely new to really improve computer input, as I've said before, specifically when the virtual keyboard came out [slashdot.org]. Using old ideas like pens, keyboards, touchscreens, we will only be hit or miss with slight improvements. The real revolutionary human to computer input device will come with a completely new idea.
    • I'm going to have to agree with practically everyone else in this thread when I say that I can type far, far faster than I can write by hand. And backspace is far better than an eraser (ever try using an erasible pen? The ink is all sticky and gunky. Ick.)

      For me, my natural keyboard is more comfortable than any other writing device I've ever used. Typewriters especially are difficult... I'm used to being able to barely touch the keys, and with a typewriter you need to really pound them. I go from 65+ wpm (I'm not really sure how fast I am, I haven't clocked myself in ages) on a keyboard to something like 18 wpm on a manual typewriter. (I also haven't used a manual typewriter in several years.)

      My point? Keyboards are cool... I highly doubt the next-generation entry device will be anything but a keyboard. But I think we ought to redesign the keyboard to better suit the needs of most power users. Whenever I have the time to relearn to type, I want to start using Dvorak [mwbrooks.com] or some other intelligently-laid-out keyboard design.

      Also, I think that the keyboard of the future ought to be more rounded than current natural keyboards. Think of a ball-shaped "board" with keys on either side. If you rest your hands and wrists, they usually want to be cupped and facing each other. Simple logic: build a keyboard that fits the contours of the hand at rest.

      Ideally, we ought to buy keyboards the way we buy shoes: get a model that fits your size. My hands are a bit smaller than most (although not tiny by any means), but a friend of mine has hands literally twice the size of mine. Why do we both have to use the same size keyboard? You should be able to go down to a keyboard shop and put your hand against some stencil on the wall and see what size you are, so you can buy keyboards, trackballs, and other entry devices that fit your particular ergonometry.

      Hmm... ergonometry... is that a word?

      • As a person of above average height (6'7", about 200 cm) I agree whole-heartedly with your keyboard fitting idea. I've adjusted to normal keyboards and normal mice, but I sure would love some larger designs.
  • As a novelty device, sure, it might be fun, but there is no way I'm going to get the 100wpm I can get with a keyboard using a pen device, no matter *how* fancy it is.
  • As a pure text input device, the keyboard makes much more sense, as you are using all 10 digits intandem. It's just a faster method of input.
  • Because I can type a hell of a lot faster than I'll ever be able to write... Plain and simple.
    Even for portable devices, the virtual keyboard way [slashdot.org] seems much better; even without tactile feedback.

  • ...trying to play Quake or Half-Life with a pen & a mouse?!? No thank you!
  • Man, if I had to write as much with a pen as I type on a daily basis I would be up for carpal tunnel in a month or two, at the latest. Not that a qwerty keyboard is perfect but doing a 25 page document or 2000 lines of code would suck if I had to use a pen.

  • I'm Extremely sorry that you had to see this... (Score:4, Funny)

    by theCURE ( 551589 ) on Wednesday April 03, 2002 @12:17PM (#3277267) Homepage
    But i think that this line:

    "What we are good at is the head of the pen," Lederer said.

    just made us all dumber.
  • maybe they'll help get by the /. lameness filters? nah, cowboyneal would probably put in some PenLameness Filters,

  • Speed of Typing (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Wednesday April 03, 2002 @12:17PM (#3277269) Journal
    The speed of typing for almost any competent typist is far faster than hand writing. It is also faster than speaking.

    Especially for the quick, some sort of keyboard input system is the most efficient way to input data.

    There probably won't be any more efficient way to do this until you have a direct ethernet feed into the brain. Unfortunately, since much thought is not word based, this will not always work well in the forseeable future.

  • ...and you thought Carpel Tunnel was bad with a keyboard!

  • Link to OTM Tech (Score:2, Informative)

    by prator ( 71051 )
    Here is a link [otmtech.com] to the OTM Tech's VPen page.

    -prator

  • i just don't see it... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by tongue ( 30814 )
    I don't see this replacing the keyboard. For one thing, I, like the vast majority of the geek population, type about ten times faster than i write. I've noticed a steady decline in the legibility of my handwriting since my first typing class o-so-many years ago. I have a hard time believing any computer can decipher what takes me hours to remember writing.

    I'd put this in the same category as i put people who think a gui interface is "faster" than a command-line is for an expert user. Yeah, a gui might be something nice for somebody who is unused to computer or a particular application--and in this day and age a mouse or similar pointing device is an indispensible part of any gui. But I think that the ONLY peripheral this thing has a chance of replacing is a pointing device.

    The article did mention some very valid uses for such technology: smart phones and pda's (a great use, IMHO), graphics tablet-type uses, general mouse replacement, etc. This, I have to believe, is the sort of use that the actual engineers designing such a beast had in mind; all the other crapola that was mentioned I firmly believe came out of the mind of a marketing droid--probably one who still hunts and pecks for keys.


  • Pens? Come on.

    Assertion #1: Its STUPID. Here's why. For one, this article infers that a pen can be faster than a keyboard in terms of its ability to provide data to a machine. Wrong. Data entry via keyboard is upwards of 10x faster than data entry by hand. That number increases with experience. 250 WPM is not uncommon among most commercial secretaries. Hell, I know people who can type faster than they can talk, let alone write. Besides, pens and their ilk are better suited for manipulation of PRE-EXISTING data, not to enter that data in the first place.

    Assertion #2: Its pointless. The problem isnt with the data. Its with our ability to organize and present that data. If theres anything we DONT need, its to increase the rate at which data is already generated. We've got so much data floating around, whole new areas of computer science have to be constructed to learn how to best deal with the backlog.

    Assertion #3: Its Non-Intuitive. Any 4th grader who's ever had to write out sentences as punishment can tell you how much fun manually enscribing data is. Right now, you simply cannot beat the keyboard in terms of its ability to move data from meat to metal. Unless, of course, you want a pen with a little 101-key QWERTY mounted on the side. For people who have to enter loads of data, youre not just asking for carpal tunnel, you're asking for arthritis and loss of manual dexterity as T increases.

    Like I said. Stupid, pointless, and non-intuitive.

    Cheers,
  • The article makes it pretty clear that they are not trying to replace keyboards for desk tops.

    (Can you imagine? I have people stealing my pens now and it is a pain. This would make it more than an annoyance.)

    And in the mobile market, where a keyboard is really not a good solutions-- someone does need to come up w/something that works better.

    We really need something driven by thought. That's a ways off so the pen will have to do for now.

    .

  • I can type faster than I can write (Score:3, Interesting)

    by YouAreFatMan ( 470882 ) on Wednesday April 03, 2002 @12:20PM (#3277302) Homepage
    So why would I want a device to slow me down? In addition, you have to pick up a pen, vs. being able to just drop your hand to a mouse and then back to the keyboard. I use a tablet for some graphics work, but I only use it when I need to because of the extra time to switch from the pen to the keyboard.

    Incidentally, I use a trackball that I hacked to have an external box with the mouse buttons so I can operate the trackball with my right foot and the buttons with my left (due to RSI). So I never take my hands off the keyboard. I can't see myself going back to having to use a hand mouse, pen, or whatever as my primary pointing device.

    • So why would I want a device to slow me down?

      You could say the same thing about GUI versus command line. For most tasks, the command line is much faster for anyone who is familiar with it. However, GUIs are better for some things, such as graphic editing where we want to see what we're doing as we're doing it. I can see places where a pen would be better than a keyboard/mouse. For example, when I'm diagramming something, or just sketching, a pencil and paper usually work better than any computer input I've used. For cases like these, I would actually prefer the pen. However, what I don't want is a tablet where I draw one place (on the tablet) and it appears somewhere else (on the screen). That's just too unnatural.

      Now I will agree that I much prefer the keyboard for many tasks, like writing documents or code.

  • duhrrr.. (pens and voice) (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kisrael ( 134664 ) on Wednesday April 03, 2002 @12:20PM (#3277308) Homepage
    "Being good human beings, we've adjusted admirably to contraptions such as keyboard and mouse pointing devices," said Charles Golvin, a mobile phone industry analyst with Forrester Research. "But these are very, very poor ways to go about interacting with such machines."

    Well, it's not like we evolved with a pen in our hand either! It's just a very, very poor way of interacting with paper. (and as others are pointing out, a poorer way than interacting with paper than say, a typewriter is)

    Kurzweil is betting that voice recognition is the future. I don't know, a full day of talking, and an office full of talkers, could get pretty rough after a while, though I suppose they could pretty quickly get into subvocalizations.

  • bloat (Score:2)

    by jsse ( 254124 )
    Reuters target those who don't type much. Their readers would probably buy into craps like this and feed the hype with more and more VC money. Don't expect to find tech news worth reading in Reuters.
  • devices like "digital pens" could possibly replace keyboards as primary data entry devices.

    Wonderful. I really miss the light pen I had on my Atari 1200xl circa 1986 or so.

    --saint
  • is everyone so damn intent on replacing the keyboard.

    rule # 1: if it works, don't fuck with it.

    the fact that in the last 3 months, 3 new PDA's have come out the primary feature of which is an integrated keyboard (yopy, zaurus and new sony)

    and one of the top accessories for other PDAs is a portable keyboard should be a hint and a half.

    voice recognition is useless in a cube farm environment. handwriting sucks (it is slow and painful).

  • As far as digital pen input goes, my Graphire Tablet ($89) kicks ass - It has a battery-less pen w/ eraser and comes with a 3 button scroll mouse (especially important! A pen is great for drawing/painting stuff, but for precision stuff - I need a mouse. Have a couple cups((or a pot)) of coffee and your shaky hands will make using a pen look like defusing a bomb)

    As far as handwriting recognition goes, the last Apple Newton was the pinnacle as far as I have tried...

    How about better speech recognition instead? Or better yet, eye movement tracking (silent). If I was able to use my monkey-thought input device with something, that would be the best!

  • Not according to MIT's Tech Review (Score:4, Informative)

    by xee ( 128376 ) on Wednesday April 03, 2002 @12:23PM (#3277333) Journal
    The current issue (Apr '02) of MIT's Technology Review [technologyreview.com] has a couple features on the future of mobile computing. This article [technologyreview.com] goes into the details of mobile computer interface design (from laptops to PDAs to MP3 players). The point is that people prefer to use their fingers to push buttons -- no matter how cool Pen Technology Of The Moment(tm) may be.

    The full text online costs about US$5, but for that much you can go to a bookstore and buy the whole issue (ironic, isn't it?).
  • Damn I missed it. Now if only I had a keyboard...

  • Replacing the keyboard?? Mouse, maybe. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DeadVulcan ( 182139 ) <dead.vulcan@pobo x . c om> on Wednesday April 03, 2002 @12:26PM (#3277357)

    If the stylus had ever been faster and more efficient than those "lowly keyboards not so different from the ones that powered the Smith Coronas and Ollivettis of yesterday," then nobody would have bothered with those Smith Coronas and Ollivettis in the first place.

    I'm not sure why the article starts by making fun of the venerable keyboard, since it serves such a different purpose.

    Now, if you told me that this laser pen might replace the mouse (which, in fact, the rest of the article seems to do), that would be a different story. It seems to me that a pen could do everything that a mouse can, and, in most respects, do it better.

  • Oh, come on... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by GregWebb ( 26123 ) on Wednesday April 03, 2002 @12:29PM (#3277378)
    This is ridiculous, and the article on Reuters reads like a press release not an objective article. About what you expect because it looks like someone's just paid to have it stuck on the wire, but hey, worth remembering that.

    With a pen I'm using three fingers to perform data input, with a keyboard I'm using ten. Far more efficient resource usage, and any character can be made with a simple twitch of no more than two fingers, while I line up the rest of my hand for the next characters.

    I can't write anywhere near 100+WPM with any legibility, but I can type at that speed with pretty good accuracy (and I'm not exactly unusual...).

    Think back to exams, and 5-10 pages of handwritten text in 2-3 hours. Major cramp problems, which I simply don't get producing way more input than that with a keyboard.

    Replace joysticks? Come on guys, I've used a pen on a touchscreen as a joystick replacement before, it's woeful. Replacing eyeball tracking cameras as a data input system? Well, if anyone can come up with an example of someone who's physically capable of gripping a pen but who makes any quantity of input by this method, I'm amazed. Put simply, that claim is extraordinary enough that I demand a reference.

    PDAs and phones? Well, most PDAs have touchscreens already so don't need anything this complex unless people want to input text to them by drawing on another surface, which seems to miss the point of a portable device. Phones? Cheap, commodity things with little data input that have to be rugged and survive teenagers? The pen makes them expensive and is going to get lost _really_ quickly. And who needs it, exactly? I mean, with decent predictive text we can already write at a pretty good speed for the length of input.

    A pen is nice for drawing, some people like them for GUI use. Personally I like a touchpad which I can use without significantly moving my hands from the keyboard but hey, everyone's different :-)

    Someone has had a bright idea and has oversold a story to Reuters, who've published it straight. No problem with that, they're a wire service not a newspaper, but this isn't a credible story. These people aren't going to take over the world and their claims are rubbish.
  • I tell you that the keyboard and the three-button mouse has become indispensable! I could not switch to trackballs back when they were making it big, and I could not go to a pen now. I cannot even figure out my handwriting anymore, much less work the stylus for my Palm.
  • My handwriting is horrible and slow. Combined the fact that I've been forced to write with my left hand on spiral notebooks on many occasions when I was younger, I've never enjoyed writing with a pen.... Though I'd rather create art with a Wacom Pen/Tablet than a mouse, I don't believe I will ever prefer writing with a pen over a keyboard again. I have memories of sweat forming between my fingers after several hours of use, and getting more severe hand cramps than I ever got by typing... maybe it's because southpaws have to push the pen (digital pens don't usually like this, the tip tends to pop and slide thanks to friction on most surfaces) instead of dragging it. Meanwhile, keyboards are born to be "ambidexterous"....

    Of course, that's just my opinion.

    If the article didn't suggest that these things could replace the common keyboard as well as the mouse, I'd probably just leave the article alone. :)

    It's worth noting that the myth that keyboard layouts were designed to slow down typing (which they weren't, they were designed to prevent jamming without forcing typists to slow down) will not do the marketing departments for these devices any good if they present it like this article just did.

  • As someone who is visually impaired... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by decipher_saint ( 72686 ) on Wednesday April 03, 2002 @12:32PM (#3277395)
    I have been legally blind my whole life, writing things on paper was a problem for me, I just coudn't keep up with other kids. So in 1985 I was given typing lessons (good ole IBM electric...) and the next year I got my first personal computer. My productivity went through the roof after I learned how to type, my marks were up and I had neatly typed notes that were easy for me to read. My typing ability coupled with my love for computers ended up culminating into my "dream job"; programmer.

    I, for one, could not imagine writing as much as I do without my friend; the QWERTY keyboard.

  • You're missing the point (Score:2, Interesting)

    by 8bit ( 127134 )
    Keyboard are better, given. BUT, for mobility, they just suck. It would be much easier to push a button on your pen and scribble a text message on the back of your cell phone than txt w/ lot sht-hnd. This can also be practical for automagically transforming notes to your computer. Depending on how much ram is in there you could possibly scribble someone's phone number on your hand without actually using ink. At a meeting you wouldn't have to carry the current bulky electronic clipboards, just your pen and maybe an extra memory stick.

    Keyboards will always rock the desktop input world...until we get neural implants. (:

  • What a moron... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by nochops ( 522181 )
    The author says:"But users everywhere still work on lowly keyboards not so different from the ones that powered the Smith Coronas and Ollivettis of yesterday" Perhaps the reason people are still using keyboards is that it's a good design that serves it's purpose efficiently, and doesn't need to be modified.
  • Like most everyone and their monkey has pointed out, this would be useless for coding and so forth. But, man, I would love to be able to input math type stuff with a pen. I managed to hand most of my assignements in university nicely typeset in LaTeX, and I would have to say that a pen interface would have made that less a feat!

    I doubt this is the application they were looking for, as mathematicians are a small market, and most worth their salt have secrataries.. umm grad students to do it for them.
  • If you're really unable to use a keyboard, train your chicken to peck out the letters for you.

    Chances are, if you're unable to use a keyboard, you're unable to use a silly pen.

  • Doh (Score:2, Funny)

    by shaunak ( 304231 )
    "Maybe so, but I would need my pen to make cool clicking sounds"

    Pens (specifically ball point pens) have been doing that for years.
    But I guess you need to know how to write to use them ... too bad for you ...

  • keyboards are great (Score:2, Interesting)

    by scjelli ( 569685 )
    keyboards are great...but only for english and other languages that use the same character set. But when you have to deal with other languages like sanscrit or chinese, most people probably write them faster than they could type.

    most character/pen recognition systems kinda suck. But i've heard, and my friend is trying, that a program called atok works pretty well for pen recognition in japanese for the palm pilot.
  • While I'm a far faster typer than I am a writer, I can see where this might be useful in some situations. If I could plug this into my box on a USB port, and have it "share" with my mouse (ie - move either one, and the mouse pointer reponds), that would actually be useful.

    For games, the mouse is still superior - but for graphic work, the fine precision with a pen is still better. Dooling? Pen. Selecting text? Depends - but I think a pen would work better a good chunk of the time. Porn surfing? Um, mouse.

  • Try this... (Score:2, Informative)

    by niftyeric ( 467236 )
    STFU!@#!$!%@#*
    http://www.slashdot.org
    cat file | sed s/word/word2/g > newfile
    vim file :q!

    Take a few minues and actually write those, how did you do?
    Yeah, I threw the pen across the room and tore the paper in half as well..
  • This way, one could teach perfect penmanship by carefully programming the CCR (Chickenscratch Character Recognition) to reject badly-looking script. Children would come out with near-perfectly human recognizable calligraphy.

    Notice that I said in schools. Not in the rest of the world, please!!!!

  • how the fuck am i gonna play quake with a pen? i can't write that many letters that fast, or at the same time.
  • I think that's the more interesting question. Keyboards can handle 100 wpm, and there's no filter between the process of writing a character and the computer interpreting the character. Pen and voice would both need this.

    But even assume the computers are so fast that there's no slowdown with that interpretation. Will it ever be easy to manipulate a UI with your voice? Possibly for some things, but about more content-focus software like a word processor? How about if you're writing a manual about how to manipulate a UI? Could you imagine the amount of escape characters at work in your dialog at that point?

    And even if that first draft was easy enough to do, how about all subsequent drafts? "Computer, go to line 135 and replace the second occurence of 'there' with 'their', and that's 't - h - e - I - r'." Sounds a little clunky to me...

    But I suppose the folks at Dragon et al. have already run into these issues and found solutions for them...
  • Virtually all of the posters here are saying my keyboarding is faster than my handwriting. Sure, you've learned that skill (even mastered it, which is a non-trivial task), but what about the people who haven't?

    One of the reasons the Palm Pilot did so well is it was easy to learn and use. You can learn Graffiti in an hour or so, and using it becomes automatic within a couple of days.

    A piece of equipment that uses familiar input devices (pens) is poised to gather more customers than a keyboard-based one. It may tick-off the techno literati (the same ones who scoff at AOL's customer's as simpletons) but businesses will continue to look for ways to reach a mass market. AOL, Microsoft, Motorola, et. al. would rather have the customers (and their cash) than slash-dotters' approval.

    (Besides, the article points out that pens are targeted at mobile phones and sub-notebook mobile computing devices. On-screen keyboards are uniformely awful, and fold-out ones are simply awkward.)

  • I don't see how I can play Quake III with pen and mouse.
  • That's right. Keyboards are antiquated, but they allow for fast, relatively accurate input. Text to speech is slower and less accurate [for now] but easier. However, imagine a text-to-speech office- the noise would drive productivity down and cases of workplace violence way up.

    What we need is the MindReader6000, a wireless input device to translate brainwaves & EEG data into text and interface controls- replacing both the mouse and the keyboard.

    Yes, it would be a steep learning curve at first. And yes, the control units would have to be tuned to the individual people using it. But people have to learn to type, too, don't they?

    Now, all I have to do is invent the damn thing...
  • My doctor has a "light pen"/digital pen that he uses in place of a mouse. The stupid thing has its 'left-click' as the front of the pen, so you have to push the pen against the monitor to click. Double-clicking is nearly impossible because the monitor is vertical and your hands aren't that steady.

    A digital pen that operates horizontally would have a tremendous advantage over current generation light pens. Granted. But it's not a replacement for the keyboard (as everyone here has argued), and it's certainly not a good substitute for the mouse.

    It might be useful as a replacement for Waccom tablets for digital artists, but that's about it.

    I'd much rather have a fingernail mounted virtual mouse that had its own cursor on screen that tracked my every vertical/horizontal movement, and at the touch of a 'synch cursor' key, snaps the real mouse cursor to the ghost cursor. That way you could type and ignore it, then when you want to use the mouse, don't even move your hand, just wave it in the air and snap the cursor to your position when you're done.

  • Hmm..I dunno, how would I be able to strafe, change weapons, and jump using this thing...There goes CounterStrike for me.. :-)
  • Of course we all know that the QWERTY keyboard was invented to slow down typists who were causing their typewriters to jam up. Keyboards were invented because writing was too slow.

    Now with computers we no longer have to worry about metal bits getting jammed, we just have to worry about electronic bits jamming. That doesn't happen too often unless you use Windows 98. (Sorry, had to do it).

    So, says Slashdot, what keyboard should we use? Why, an ergonomic Dvorak keyboard of course. The letters are layed out to provide for the fastest of typing if you learn how to use it.

  • Q: Could a Pen Replace the Keyboard?

    A: No.

    Perhaps the keyboard is so efficient that it makes it a little too easy to produce a lot of words when one would do. ;-)

  • It's sad that handwriting is is such low esteme. One of my other hobbies is collecting fountain pens, and it is often discussed. Part of the problem is that teachers aren't really trained in handwriting instruction as they once were.

    Still, for a "thank you," birthday, or other special, personal event, I will almost always hold the handwriten note in higher regard than the quick e-mail. One conveys some effort and care; the other, an afterthought (though I do get a kick out of it).

    As for this technology, a company called Anoto [anoto.com] is developing a similar technology. The pen is about the size of my larger founts, but a ballpoint (the bid downside). Under the point is a small camera. You write on paper with a special grid patern. The camera records the strokes, and transmits them to another device using bluetooth.

    One of their main applciations would be to capture information on filling out a form, then uploading it to an device.

    I haven't seen anyone selling it, though some big names are involved: Cross, Pilot, Sanford (who owns rotring, Parker, and Waterman) are providing the pen know-how. Others for the tehcnology, Logitech being one of them.

  • I have a pentablet, not the one described in the article naturaly, but the ergonmics of it are the same.

    The problem with pens is CLICKING. If the pen has buttons on it in addition to a tip, then those buttons are going to be arse end small anyways.

    But just pushing down the tip of a pen without moving it off of the icon is a challenge. The pen / pencil form factor was designed for MOVING not for sitting still.

    A lot of work went into the design of the mouse so that it could be both moved AND held still. Clicking with a mouse is easy, you have a nice thick base to work with. With a tool with a pen form factor you are basicaly screwed. Yes it can be done, but it is not nice. Double clicking is almost impossible, ugh.

    OTM must overcome a legacy of failure for digital pens.

    False. Digitabs are VERY popular.

    For drawing.

    DUH.

    They are called digitabs because they are digital tablets. The best out there (to my knowledge) is the Wacom Intuos. Most of their other digitabs are highly over priced, but these babys rock. Of course you have to get the airbrush accessory (another few hundred) to realize their true potential.

    Tilt sensoring.

    w00t.

    Annnyways. They rock. Ok actualy I have never USED one, but everybody else says they rock and they are kind of like a 56" trinitron screen. Yah you cannot even afford to go into a store that showcases them, but damnit, you can still drool just THINKING about them. :)
  • Making the oft-made mistake of reading the comments, I've noticed that there is a lot of ignotance in regards to handwriting recognition (HWR).

    It seems people equate real HWR with the HWR on the first Newton model, as seen on the Simpsons. That's not the case. After a couple years, when the Newton devices reached the Newton OS 2.0 version, HWR had progressed lightyears. HWR has come a long way in the last 9 years since the original Newton MessagePad.

    Fortunately, real HWR didn't die with the Newton. On the downside, it seems that the ParaGraph system is the only provider that exists today, with the same engine (derived from the Newton OS system) in a few implementations.

    For desktop Windows, there is PenOffice [paragraph.com]; for WinCE/PocketPC, there is
    CalliGrapher [paragraph.com]; and MS Transcriber [microsoft.com], a free version with the same core as CalliGrapher, but with fewer handy features.

    With either CalliGrapher or the Newton, the experience of myself and others is that with 2 months of training the neural net by making corrections brings the accuracy up to 99%+ at 40-60 WPM. I tried to use Graffiti and other character recognition (CR) methods before finding real HWR for longer periods of time with pitiful results.

    I have horrible handwriting. The great thing about real HWR is that it's incrementally trainable. A neural net learns your handwriting style better than even programmable stroke-based systems can.

    Pure real HWR isn't always the best thing when writing code for languages with an overly complex algol-ish syntax. However, used in tandem with programmable a stroke system or macros within the HWR system, it can work out very well.

    For example, a program called PenCommander comes with CalliGrapher for PocketPC. PenCommander allows you to program macros. I like to hack Smalltalk, Scheme, and perl on my iPAQ. Smalltalk and Scheme aren't problems, due to the fact that there's almost no syntax and punctuation, and that the function, method and class names are more word-like.

    For perl, I have macros set-up. For example, to create a new sub, I have write the word "sub" and circle it, which expands to:

    sub SUB {
    my ($x, $y, @z) = @_;
    return 0;
    }

    It's a shame that real HWR is confined to the one implementation by ParaGraph. I imagine this is due, at least in part, to the mythology of the Newton, and the impressions of the first three models. As a result, there is only real HWR for the Newton, WinCE, and desktop Windows. I reccomend you try one out for a few months, if you have a PPC or a tablet-based Windows machine. If there was real HWR for Linux, I could dump WinCE on my iPAQ. The only reasons I use WinCE is for the real HWR- I can't imagine putting up with Jot, Graffiti, xstroke, wavvy, &c again!

  • pens are for old people who learned penmanship (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mathboy ( 10519 ) on Wednesday April 03, 2002 @02:38PM (#3278332)
    Kids coming out of schools will soon all have better typing skills than writing skills - there's no reason to make all new equipment use pens and slow down input to computers. Even a crappy typist that types 30wpm cant match that with a pen, not for extended periods of time. I can type for hours with no problem, but I remember writing exams being quite painful.

    We need increased speed of input devices to computers, not pens.

    Hell, we should be criticizing the keyboard for its short-sighted 'one key at a time' input and go to a chord system which some people have gotten up to 200wpm on on custom versions.

    And there's no reason to have a pen when keyboards
    can now be projected onto a surface according to a recent slashdot article....

  • pens bring pain (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Darth_Burrito ( 227272 ) on Wednesday April 03, 2002 @02:45PM (#3278381)
    Maybe its not that big an issue, but I know that myself and everyone else who has suffered through 2 hour long essay tests finds that their writing hand is in a great deal of pain. I don't have this problem with a decent keyboard.

    Also there's another issue I hav't seen mentioned. Unless the pen functions as a mouse as well, you will either have to learn to use a mouse with your off hand or switch back and forth.

    If it doubles as a mouse, would that mean you'd be tapping the pen against something non stop while playing quake? That would require a lot more muscle movement than a mouse finger click. It kind of reminds me of when everyone thought touch screens would be a great idea until they discovered Gorilla Arm [tuxedo.org].

    How do you tell the difference between characters like this:
    ", ', |, l, 1, `, \
    :,;,.,,
    -, _,
    (, [
    You could probably get some of the above using context but that will only get you so far.

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