When we slim down all the oversized keys on a standard keyboard, and add some color coding by function and dots to represent the “home row”, we can better see the true design features of the standard keyboard layout. Its origins in the 1870s† (see also http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=61586) become very obvious:Show Image(http://i.imgur.com/PvbHDjV.png)
Discuss.
† The design dates from before much study of human factors / ergonomics, before the concept of “touch typing”, and this was little changed from the first idea that popped into the designers’ heads after their previous design which was a 2-row piano-like layout. Later additions were haphazard, and IBM is mostly responsible for the version we have today.
I agree.
The factors that governed the design of the first typewriters and then the first computer keyboards are now largely irrelevant. It's time for a better design.
I agree.
The factors that governed the design of the first typewriters and then the first computer keyboards are now largely irrelevant. It's time for a better design.
Why is a better design necessary if the current one is perfectly satisfactory?
I think I agree with you, but aren't you beating a dead horse here?Maybe. But I think analysis is helpful, and diagrams are a good way to aid analysis.
What's your point?
There are billions of such keyboards out there,Unfortunate, huh?
and it will never change. Technology will make keyboards obsolete before their layout is fixed.I think this is excessively pessimistic. I think making a change would be difficult, but not impossible. There has been very much research and development effort put into the physical construction of typewriters and computer keyboards (in particular for the last 20 years in how to make them cheaply), and tremendous effort put into the hardware that does computations. By contrast there has been relatively little research effort put into improving the layout or function of keyboard hardware or keyboard-handling software, because computer and peripheral vendors either don’t see the point, or think it’s impossible to find a market in it.
I think creative minds, like you, should dedicate their efforts to these questions:I think these questions are misguided. Any other device or technology is going to need to grapple with the same difficulties a keyboard has, and keyboards have several important advantages that will be hard to replicate while switching to something substantially different. I haven’t seen anything else that comes close to replacing most of the keyboard’s use cases in an acceptable way.
- How do we make the keyboard obsolete?
- What comes next?
The above is simply to suggest there are a number of factors that could influence susceptibility to CTS extraneous to a users layout.There are clearly many other factors involved: