On Wednesday 14 April 2004 23:07, Alan Kay wrote:
> 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).

I finally got to see the whole 1968 Demo video the other day and was 
impressed at how well this worked. In my own scheme

  http://www.lsi.usp.br/~jecel/merlin4.7/chord.html

I used just four keys since you were supposed to be able to hold the 
device in your hand while entering text. Having to do two strokes for 
characters (not for the most common ones, however) slows things down, 
as can be seen by trying out this Java simulation (it was originally in 
Self and then Squeak, but Java was easier to distribute back then)

   http://www.lsi.usp.br/~jecel/merlin4.7/features.html

-- Jecel