Chorded keyboard

They take significant practice to even get started, so the barrier to entry is pretty high. With a normal keyboard, anyone who can see and spell can immediately use it.

Made and tried to use a sort of chorded keyboard out of a keypad. The idea breaks down when you need to emit some key combination like Command-Shift-[ (I am a Mac user).

Price, availability. For instance, steno software costed thousands of dollars. But this is about to change:

- Plover is a free, cross-platform steno software: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZGuBV1xe64

- This Canadian guy develops cool, quality steno and ergonomic boards. The Georgi is $95USD - significantly less expensive than alternatives. There aren't any official reviews yet, but Plover users on Discord seem to really like it.

https://www.gboards.ca/product/georgi (web site appears temporarily down though - was up yesterday.)

I'm planning to buy one this week - trying to get my boss to cover it since it will help with my mild RSI.

Learning curve I guess. Usually "easy" devices take off.

The concept actually did take off, but it doesn't look like piano chords. I think that keyboard shortcuts that use modifier keys are basically the same idea, and that's regularly used across every desktop OS.

There's a long motor-skill learning curve with these.

I've tried the "handykey twiddler" years ago and I just could not get motivated to practice enough to use the thing in real life.

For mobile use, the situation is is even worse because it requires the user to carry another piece of hardware in addition to the phone. Chording keyboards existed well before smartphones came on the scene, and the thinking was that you would have some type of heads-up/eyeglass display like Google-glass.

I guess it's just one of those funny things that people thought would be hot in the future but never materialized or turned out to not be desirable when it did.

If you're typing a single letter at a time, from what I've read, a chorded keyboard tends to be significantly slower because that's just how fingers work. (Similar to how a pianist can play melodies much faster than they can repeat chords, because they're not using the same finger twice in a row.)

If you assign common words or syllables to additional chords, then speed goes back up, but it becomes so much harder to learn -- so much memorization.

Stenographers (like in court) use a keyboard that relies on simultaneous keys (the chord principle, but still with more keys than fingers) to achieve speeds even greater than normal speech, with their own predefined combinations (tons of practice to learn) -- but unless you're transcribing speech in court or providing live closed captioning, it doesn't seem to be a skill worth investing in.

loosely speaking, I think there's a limit on finger actions per unit time, so if you're spending more per letter, you're getting a lower WPM

as an example, Matias' one-hand keyboard, in which half of the characters cost an extra keypress, had people getting up to 75% of their normal qwerty WPM [1]

I've never seen any study of a chording keyboard doing more than 70 WPM without a steno style multiple character output system

[1]: http://edgarmatias.com/papers/ic93/

The "40% keyboard" is part-way there, and has been a growing niche since 2015.

Isn’t that awkward though? I type H and U with the same finger. So now this involves some strange wrist / arm rotation - or changing the way I type.

I remember looking into this package when I was trying to find a way to organize all my commands in emacs, but found that what I'd actually wanted was to be able to make any key a modifier key.

Like, if bn takes me to the next buffer, I wanted bnnn to take me three buffers over. I didn't expect it to be a dealbreaker, but over time it got more and more irritating to me.

I wonder how hard it would be to modify the package to work that way. I guess you'd have to make it so it doesn't actually insert a letter until you release a key to establish it's not being used as a modifier, which I'm not sure if emacs is in control of

Much more interested in hearing about the NLS/Augment clone! :)

I've been reading a lot about NLS/Augment (and Engelbart in general) lately. Any more information on your setup?

If you're interested in bragging/chatting more about it, my email is in my profile. I'd love to learn about what you're doing.

These are all the same product with different switches and labels on the box, interestingly enough.

I remember looking into these for gaming some years ago and being disappointed that the thumbstick was just a digital directional pad and not a proper analog stick. Does anybody know of any good input devices of this form factor that have proper analog inputs?

Do you still use it? If so how does your WPM compare to a standard keyboard these days?

I've always wanted to try one of these out but I'm not much of one to make it myself.

For vim users, there is a plugin called arpeggio: https://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2425

>With users reaching typing speeds of up to 65 wpm or more on their phone or tablet, DOTKey has unlocked the potential of mobile devices

I just did a typing test on my regular phone keyboard and got 60. But maybe this will bring me up to desktop speeds. And if I get a physical corded keyboard, I'll go interstellar!

Tried it a bit and directly get problems with the wrists. I would consult someone about the economics. I love the idea of typing without looking on the screen but I can't hold my hand in that position longer than a minute without getting pain.

I like this idea the most, where you wear a ring on each of your fingers. Ideally you could map individual muscles in your hand to keys, which could give you a keyboard on 1 hand that you could use with any device: phone, desktop etc.

I own one, but never did manage to get much fluency with it. The build quality is good, though keeping it positioned in your hand right is tricky. I hold it with the bottom on my thigh so it doesn't slip down. The mouse joystick isn't analog and therefore basically useless.

That said, the ergonomics of it are stupid amounts better than any keyboard. You can just wheel your chair back a bit and sit however is comfortable. Changing position while using it is much easier too since you're just holding it in your hand.

I should get back to practicing on it I think. The advantages would be enormous.

I used one of these for a few months. I used it to write while walking around the mall or other mindless walking. It was pretty cool. I'll probably break it out again, was difficult to use for programming because lots of characters require custom chords I never got to making.

Can you explain more, or point us to a document on the subject? I purchased a twiddler 2 some time ago and found it to be a frustrating experience, although something that I'd like to utilize more.

Would be nice if we didn't already have touch id and face id.

On my Galaxy S9+, I have 4 buttons: power, vol up/down and a stupid useless bixby button. Ignoring how to put it into 'password' mode, each of these buttons is effectively a bit. I assume you need at least 1 key to register an input (otherwise wait for a pause which I won't consider), so you get 15 possibilities. I think you could make a reasonably strong password using 4-8 chords (15^4-15^8 possibilities). Anyways, it's certainly better than those swipe passwords with an effective length of 9 Cr 4 == 128 which are readily seen and copied by nearby people.