[HN Gopher] A different kind of keyboard (2021)
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A different kind of keyboard (2021)
Author : kblissett
Score : 103 points
Date : 2024-08-14 15:30 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ianthehenry.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ianthehenry.com)
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| Would love to see a video of them typing on it at 10wpm! That's
| seems decent for a phone.
| chipdart wrote:
| I think that smartphones with full keyboard and auto
| complete/autocorrect get you faster than 10wpm. Even the old
| number pad phones would beat that in the hands of your average
| 90s teenager.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| At least I know keyboard mistakes are my own fault.
| Smartphone "corrections" have a 30% chance of altering the
| intention of my words.
|
| (Amusingly, typing this on my phone, Apple corrected
| "mistakes are my own" to "mistakes are not")
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| I have a iPhone 13 Mini and generally just smash all over
| the place. I turned auto correct off and spell check on,
| because that seemed like the best method for me to just
| mash through my sentence and manually select the
| autocorrect/spell check option I want.
| ggambetta wrote:
| That doesn't sound decent to me, haven't measured but I'm sure
| I can swipe a lot faster than that on a phone.
| dmd wrote:
| Er, what? Without even trying hard I get (according to the
| typing.com 1 minute test) 58 wpm on my phone - and that's
| without using swiping or autocompletion.
| vunderba wrote:
| People could hit that speed on old numberpad based phones. On
| any decently modern smartphone with swipe IME enabled it's
| pretty trivial to hit 30-40 WPM.
| rgreekguy wrote:
| I don't have the links handy now to make an effortpost, but there
| seem to be more than a handful of open source (and not only?)
| projects for such keyboards. Not all with 8 keys, but chording
| and one hand is the focus.
|
| You can work with something like this with a numpad, there are a
| few QMK numpads out there now, I believe the cheapest is ~50-60$.
|
| Now, for one-handed keyboards: they are all super expensive, but
| intriguing stuff, for sure. Of the top of my head: Mattias half-
| keyboard, Tipy, the good old Maltron, some odd keyboard in a
| normal format, but with a circular layout that I don't remember
| the name of, and Frogpad (or something) that seems to have a
| dodgy fame, if it is still being sold at all. I believe these are
| all the commercial ones.
|
| On custom keyboards, again, some split keyboards have a
| controller on both halves of the keyboard, so you can use them
| standalone. You can go to town and make your own layout there.
|
| Although I am doing some research on that these days(-ish), I
| have no links handy because I am not interested in chording, and
| the commercial ones are expensive. And I am sloppy, and I
| remember some stuff...
|
| Edit: QMK has some "one-handed mode" thingy nowadays, I have not
| looked into it at all.
| eimrine wrote:
| Why not to split keyboard into 2 pieces and place it on the back
| of the smartphone in order to make possible touchtyping with 8
| fingers?
| jerf wrote:
| Your fingers are doing double-duty pushing buttons and yet also
| holding the phone/keyboard combo without pushing buttons. Even
| this design has that problem to some extent and it's got a lot
| more room to hold the phone.
|
| 6 fingers might work. I'm holding my phone in landscape here
| with my thumb and pinky. I've got three fingers in the back on
| each side I could use. I think I could just about get two
| layers of buttons in for each finger without too much
| discomfort, but my ring fingers aren't too happy about shifting
| down to try to reach a fourth there. (And while every other
| aspect of the skillset has long since decayed, I did play piano
| for many years and I still retain those basic muscle skills; if
| mine are complaining there's a lot of people who straight up
| won't be able to do it.)
|
| 12 still leaves you with chording or arpeggiating or something
| very, very non-standard, though.
|
| I don't think you could hold it like that for very long. Just
| in the time it took me to type out my brief experiences on my
| real physical keyboard afterwards my pinkies are already
| tingling just a touch. Not a good sign.
|
| An interesting experiment to see if the back of the phone is
| useful for anything, though. Certainly worth some more thought
| and experimentation. Phones would be _so_ much more useful if
| they had something like keyboard speeds available in our
| pockets.
| thih9 wrote:
| This is one of the many[1] reminders that a lot of people want a
| smartphone with a hardware keyboard.
|
| Personally I have a small bluetooth mechanical keyboard, it saved
| me a couple of times when I wanted to do heavy text editing and
| only had a smartphone with me.
|
| I would welcome another option - small like this one - for casual
| texting and gaming.
|
| [1]: 900+ votes for a keyboard case here earlier:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38871987
| nine_k wrote:
| The traditional tiny keyboard is optimized for ease of
| onboarding, but it sucks to actually type on with any speed.
| The thing posted has a steeper learning curve, but can be used
| to type quickly and without even having to glance at the actual
| keyboard. You can keep it at the back of your phone, or in the
| pocket of your coat, or have it mounted on the handlebars of
| your bike. (Actually you can have all three, connecting via
| Bluetooth.)
|
| AFAIK this is the kind of keyboard military pilots use to
| quickly type things; you don't have _room_ for a QWERTY
| keyboard in a jet fighter cockpit.
|
| What I badly miss on the example layout is navigation and
| manipulation keys. Semicolon + D and semicolon + K have ample
| room to put there left and right arrows, ctrl + left and right
| arrows (word navigation), home, end. Somewhere else should be
| select mode (maybe while holding A), so that the arrows had the
| shift modifier (selecting) and copy and paste commands (sending
| ctrl+C and ctrl+V).
|
| OTOH navigation and editing is a separate enough activity to
| warrant traditional layer switching aka modal editing.
| y04nn wrote:
| The only portable keyboard that I enjoyed using is the Think
| Outside keyboard [1]. It is a great compromise between
| portability and usability. But a lot of shortcuts are not
| working on moderne devices. It even works as a stand for the
| phone. But it uses 2 AAA batteries. I wonder if it would be
| possible to flash it to work with modern devices or even
| better, customize it.
|
| [1] https://jsyang.ca/hardware/think-outside-bluetooth-
| folding-k...
| seltzered_ wrote:
| There's been some similar setup examples on the
| ergomobilecomputers subreddit - never indexed phone-specific
| setups but here's a rough search: https://www.reddit.com/r/Er
| goMobileComputers/search/?q=phone...
|
| Theres currently a design contest for a pocket keyboard:
| https://chrischrislolo.github.io/orthoLabLogs/pocket-
| keyboar...
| zamadatix wrote:
| I think the concept of not wanting to use touch keyboards on a
| smartphone is wildy more popular than actually wanting a
| hardware keyboard on your smartphone. I.e. 900 upvotes is
| probably more to say people dislike where they have to settle
| more than many liking the idea (and practice) of actually
| changing their choice of compromises. It'd be so frickin'
| convenient but, at the same time, so is basically any other
| concept that would take up a ton more of your pocket/hand
| space.
|
| On that front I'm surprised Clicks doesn't have any options at
| all to have it double as an extra external battery. The size of
| the external battery case market is probably 50x+ the volume of
| the external keyboard market and that'd be a pretty unique
| differentiator in that segment. It's even something they
| responded to in their FAQ.
| mzs wrote:
| Wow home row plus space with A being a modifier and " RETURN plus
| ENTER, TAB, CAPLOCK/CTRL, and SHIFT might actually be amazing
| with a typical US layout keyboard with numpad. ESC could be A;
| jhardy54 wrote:
| In case it isn't already on your radar:
| https://precondition.github.io/home-row-mods
| autumn-antlers wrote:
| love seeing this resurface, am working on something similar
| myself -- it'll be like running Taipo on the Fulcrum, with
| influence from Ikcelaks "Word Builder" serial-steno system (in
| case anyone wants terms to research :p)
|
| i'll try to polish a write-up when i finish, but really need to
| focus on finishing first >u<
| Carrok wrote:
| Back when iPhone jailbreaks were common, I installed a morse code
| keyboard, the whole keyboard had just two buttons. Dit on the
| left, dah on the right. My motivation for doing so was being able
| to type out a message with my phone in my pocket or otherwise not
| looking at the screen.
|
| This looks like a much more realistic way to achieve the same
| goal. Interesting, if it wasn't so large I might even be tempted
| to try it out.
| mk_stjames wrote:
| Look up 2-key macro programmable keyboards, and maybe replacing
| the switches with low-profile ones, and you're good to go.
|
| Something like https://www.tindie.com/products/anavi/anavi-
| macro-pad-2/
| robertlutece wrote:
| Google keyboard for iOS has a morse option
| jccalhoun wrote:
| This reminds me of a story I read about pre-iphone where a
| morse code operator was faster than a text message
| https://www.engadget.com/2005-05-06-morse-code-trumps-sms-in...
| mk_stjames wrote:
| When he wrote 'arpeggiator', I was thinking this was going to go
| in another direction- holding down a single key that starts at a
| letter and then releasing the key as it reaches the letter you
| want. Because when I think an arpeggiator on a synthesizer, it's
| done via holding a key while notes repeat.
|
| I always was very good at texting on a number-pad phone, via
| repeated presses- pressing (4) two times for a "H", pressing (3)
| two times for an "E", pressing (5) three times for an "L", etc
| etc. I was so used to this that I didn't even progress to using
| T9 texting before blackberrys and smartphones took over.
|
| So I thought... taking that idea, and doing a press-and-hold
| while letters scroll by, could be pretty fast. And you could dial
| up the repeat rate until you started making mistakes. Map 8 keys
| for letters, one key for a space bar and long-press for extras,
| one key for backspace and long press for extras, and I think
| you'd be able to hit much more than 10 w.p.m. that the author
| winds up hitting.
|
| Only problem: this can't be instantiated as a normal USB
| compliant keyboard and allow you to see the letters scrolling as
| you hold, without a specialty keyboard app for the phone.
| thih9 wrote:
| > When he wrote 'arpeggiator'
|
| Note that the text only mentions arpeggio[1], not
| arpeggiator[2].
|
| > when I think an arpeggiator on a synthesizer
|
| Playing an arpeggio[1] on a guitar or a piano means hitting the
| keys or plucking the strings in a quick succession - just like
| entering key combinations on this keyboard.
|
| And yes, an arpeggiator keyboard sounds like an interesting
| concept too.
|
| [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arpeggio
|
| [2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesizer#Arpeggiators
| jccalhoun wrote:
| I've thought that something like this would be good for
| inputing text with controllers. with an onscreen keyboard
| moving your thumbsticks around seems like it would be faster in
| the long run than trying to use an onscreen qwerty keyboard.
| uxamanda wrote:
| This app is not exactly your idea but it is along the same
| lines. You "drive" towards the letter you want by shifting your
| finger. It is the most interesting text input I've ever seen
| and have always thought it would be cool with some sort of
| joystick input.
|
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dasher-mobile/id1304772617
|
| Edit: this link has a video:
| https://acecentre.org.uk/project/dasher-for-ios/
| willwade wrote:
| Ha! That's me! If anyone wants to help dasher dev please get
| in touch. We need $$$ or some good c coders willing to spend
| a couple of months working on it all. It's good. It's the
| fastest text interface for eyegaze, head mouse or "continuous
| gesture". We need it desperately for those who can't speak
| uxamanda wrote:
| Woah, nice! I am definitely not a c coder, but I'm a UX
| designer. I've thought this project was cool for years and
| would be interested in helping out if my skills are ever of
| any use.
| kaz-inc wrote:
| I believe there is an accessibility setting for the visually
| impaired that puts a 4x2 grid of pressable squares on the phone
| screen, and users flip their phone and use it in portrait mode.
| This might be iPhone only? I remember in the video for this that
| iPhone accessibility was much better.
| dang wrote:
| Discussed at the time:
|
| _A different kind of keyboard_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28611632 - Sept 2021 (147
| comments)
| BobbyTables2 wrote:
| I love the idea of a compact corded keyboard.
|
| In practice, they seem like a recipe for sudden onset of RSI.
|
| Remap Carl-B as the tmux hotkey and do it single handedly --
| permanent RSI (trigger finger) in two weeks!
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