Matias Half Keyboard

[Hyde]

http://matias.ca/halfkeyboard/

Was looking for pictures for Quiet Pro and Tactile Pro on the Matias website.  Then I come across this, and then I was like how come no one ever mentioned about this before?

Seems like a pretty cool idea except that price...    ($595)

Also look like it's rubberdome too.  So this is probably the most expensive rubberdome ever?  Also how do we call this, 20% keyboard lol?

[metalliqaz]

They claim the price is due to the fact that they don't sell enough of them to get volume pricing.

Unfortunately I just don't buy it.  They also sell a fullsize keyboard which is otherwise just a regular old crumby keyboard.  However since it supports the half typing technique, suddenly it is worth 50x more.

You see this Matias guy has a patent on the technique.  He got some papers published back in the nineties.  It's how he started the company.  They're just cashing in.

I also have suspicions that they try to sell it as a medical device for disabilities.  That would mean that insurance or Medicare is paying the bill, and they can charge pretty much anything.  Just suspicion, though... unfounded.

I remember reading about those when they hit the market.  I really wanted to try it, but I couldn't afford it.  I'm going to try to program it into Bpiphany's controller, though.

[WhiteFireDragon]

That's actually an innovative design, but not very practical. This will slow your typing speed to about half, and also require you to rebuild muscle memory. The main flaw is the space bar.

When you hold it down, it'll switch to the other keyboard side, but when you tap, it'll register as a space. When you start to type fast, quick switching keyboard sides with the space bar will eventually start looking like a tap, and it'll turn into a space instead of the switched side function. So now you're capped a certain speed, depending on the threashold of how long you have to hold down the space bar to activate the other side. In addition, If you have a maximum typing speed and now the left hand has to type double the amount of words, then your typing speed will be cut in half. Lastly, just think how much your thumb has to now work. Statistically, every other key now requires you to press down the space bar, in addition to the space after every letter.

[isotopes59]

I wonder if they make a right handed version, or would that be a left handed version?  )

I played with the demo and it's kinda weird.  I just can't figure out why you'd want to type with one hand if you do have the ability to type with two.

[chel-]

looks like a terrible idea imo. I can't imagine trying to learn how to type on that.

[FoxWolf1]

I could see the point for people who have only got one hand, but for anyone else, it's quite cumbersome. Even if you acclimate, there's a speed limit imposed by the space bar system; in the demo at least, if you type fast enough that there's some overlap between key presses, a lot of the time your attempts to type a space turn the first letter of the next word into something else instead.

[Hyde]

I wonder if they should've divided the spacebar in half.  In that case then can have half as spacebar and half for switching letters.

But yeah it's like people said there's no way you'll type faster than using two hands.  But maybe for one hand typist it doesn't get better than this?

[Rinsaku]

This would definitely cramp a hand with heavy use.

[davkol]

Hasn't a single-handed Maltron been around for ages?

[poog]

so it's basically http://www.onehandkeyboard.org/ right?
Except without predictive text so you have to press spacebar.

I tried it before (the program, not the keyboard) and it's kinda cool that you can eat and type at the same time lol.

[davkol]

it's kinda cool that you can eat and type at the same time lol.

Not only eat. ಠ_ಠ

[Hyde]

it's kinda cool that you can eat and type at the same time lol.

Not only eat. ಠ_ಠ

You use the mouse for that 

On a side note I do admit it's pain in the ass to eat potato chips while typing on msn with one hand.  Maybe I should learn a way to type with one hand on regular qwerty keyboards lol.

[zpcrash]

That's actually an innovative design, but not very practical. This will slow your typing speed to about half, and also require you to rebuild muscle memory. The main flaw is the space bar.

When you hold it down, it'll switch to the other keyboard side, but when you tap, it'll register as a space. When you start to type fast, quick switching keyboard sides with the space bar will eventually start looking like a tap, and it'll turn into a space instead of the switched side function. So now you're capped a certain speed, depending on the threashold of how long you have to hold down the space bar to activate the other side. In addition, If you have a maximum typing speed and now the left hand has to type double the amount of words, then your typing speed will be cut in half. Lastly, just think how much your thumb has to now work. Statistically, every other key now requires you to press down the space bar, in addition to the space after every letter.

Not that I disagree with this board requiring a non-trivial learning curve and/or being very tiring, but I should hope their space bar implementation is better than that.  There are many ways they could implement this without creating arbitrary speed limits.

For instance: if you press and release space without hitting any other key then it will register as a space.  If you hit another key while space is down, it will send the mirrored key from the opposite hand and not send the space.  Therefore, no speed limit; you'll just get unintentional spaces if you start to type a character on the opposite hand then stop.  It would be like every time you hit shift but then didn't hit another key you got an unwanted character.

Obviously there keyboard will not work well for certain non-traditional uses, but I sure it works fine for regular typing once you get the hang of it.

[metalliqaz]

On a side note I do admit it's pain in the ass to eat potato chips while typing on msn with one hand.  Maybe I should learn a way to type with one hand on regular qwerty keyboards lol.

Actually people do type quite successfully with one hand on normal keyboards.  Give it a shot.  Obviously it's a lot slower than two hands but you could get the hang of it pretty quick.  If you were disabled, you would certainly be able to master it.

[Burz]

That's actually an innovative design, but not very practical. This will slow your typing speed to about half, and also require you to rebuild muscle memory. The main flaw is the space bar.

When you hold it down, it'll switch to the other keyboard side, but when you tap, it'll register as a space. When you start to type fast, quick switching keyboard sides with the space bar will eventually start looking like a tap, and it'll turn into a space instead of the switched side function. So now you're capped a certain speed, depending on the threashold of how long you have to hold down the space bar to activate the other side. In addition, If you have a maximum typing speed and now the left hand has to type double the amount of words, then your typing speed will be cut in half. Lastly, just think how much your thumb has to now work. Statistically, every other key now requires you to press down the space bar, in addition to the space after every letter.

Not that I like the idea of half-keyboards, but the above is faulty reasoning. Using your logic, only half of the keys would take twice as long to actuate which would cut the overall speed by only 25%.

There is no reason why a device like this would take a variable like a typist's speed and reduce it by half. And I would expect the keyboard to have no problem discerning whether the Space is depressed at the same moment another key is pressed-- briefness of the press ought to be irrelevant (or else the device is implemented poorly). The actual speed and accuracy penalty is probably more complex but less severe than you make it out to be, depending more on how coordinated the typist's thumb is with four fingers (as opposed to how all of the fingers coordinate with each other), not simply how fast the typist could move their fingers on one hand while both hands were being used.

The penalty should be reduced further by eliminating the need for physical coordination between left/right hemispheres of the brain.