Chording Keyboards vs Dvorak or Querty

Alan Kay Alan.Kay at squeakland.org
Thu Apr 15 02:07:48 UTC 2004


Hi Julian --

I got a chance to learn NLS in the late 60s and became a big fan of 
Doug's scheme for "two handed navigation, commands, and short 
keyboard inputs". The original Alto at PARC came equipped with a 3 
button mouse and a 5 key chord keyboard. It was actually a shame that 
most people didn't want to become expert users and use the NLS 
"dual-mode" scheme (hands out and hands in) for the tremendous 
efficiency it provided (even after they had gone through their novice 
period with simpler and much slower controls).

Probably a good way to introduce it today is to make it part of a 
videogame interface and just let the kids learn it (or some equally 
efficient new way to rapidly navigate, command and type).

One still needed the regular keyboard in the center for faster typing 
of paragraph or longer text. Many of the NLS hackers could do around 
30 words per minute with "hands out" (and of course a reasonably good 
typist can do about 80 wpm on a regular keyboard -- a little faster 
using the Dvorak scheme with practice).

Cheers,

Alan

At 4:48 PM -0700 4/14/04, Julian Mcalister wrote:
>Hello, I'm a student at Cal State Monterey University and I came 
>across your post about Doug Engelbarts handset.  At the moment my 
>class is doing a project on, and working with, Mr. Engelbart and we
>are trying to gather as much information as possible.  You mentioned 
>that you had created a driver for a keyset similar to Doug's and I 
>was wondering if you wouldn't mind letting us have a look at
>it. 
>
>Thank you,
>Julian


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