2016/06/20 [DMFA #1673] What does her keyboard look like?

[ChaosMageX]

Seriously, I'm really curious what a keyboard would look like that would allow someone with just three digits on each hand to type efficiently.  That might actually be a factor in determining whether she's able to complete that mock-up article within the hour allotted.

[HaDDea]

Seriously, I'm really curious what a keyboard would look like that would allow someone with just three digits on each hand to type efficiently.  That might actually be a factor in determining whether she's able to complete that mock-up article within the hour allotted.

You need to go and research the rare and dying breed of hunt-and-peck typists (of which my dad is one)

Maybe Regina is starting to realize how one-sided her rivalry is? Aliph is trying to be a good influence on her - he might even be succeeding (well, maybe not in the encouragement department, but still...)

[Qwex1]

Seriously, I'm really curious what a keyboard would look like that would allow someone with just three digits on each hand to type efficiently.  That might actually be a factor in determining whether she's able to complete that mock-up article within the hour allotted.

Depends wildly on the language you are typing, but it's probably not a "qwerty" because those are terribly inefficient.

Oh wait that's what we use...

[James StarRunner]

Yeah... We changed to qwerty so that the typists using typewriters at the time had to slow down so they didn't jam it up... And now that we don't need it anymore, we still stick with qwerty... Smart.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Yeah... We changed to qwerty so that the typists using typewriters at the time had to slow down so they didn't jam it up... And now that we don't need it anymore, we still stick with qwerty... Smart.

... And this is only because the spring in early typewriters wasn't strong enough to return fast enough for the typist, so they had to slow the typist down. :-(

I'd go play with dvorak, but it's much harder to find a decent dvorak keyboard...

[Kalatash]

Yeah... We changed to qwerty so that the typists using typewriters at the time had to slow down so they didn't jam it up... And now that we don't need it anymore, we still stick with qwerty... Smart.

I think it's mostly the fact that by the time that the mechanics of keyboards had moved beyond worrying about physical jams, there was a LOT of people who had learned QWERTY and a lot of QWERTY based equipment, so making something that wasn't backwards compatible to previous training didn't make sense economically. And only grows more so the further along we go.

[Lying Foo]

It wasn't actually to slow typists down, it was to keep successive letters apart.  It started out in alphabetical order - note the consonants D through L still are - but it kept jamming, so the keys were moved to different positions.

[ChaosMageX]

What is interesting about all this is that since the users of the keyboards have less fingers to press the same numbers of keys with, that means that each of their fingers would have to do more reaching on average than our fingers have to, especially those with just two fingers and one thumb on each hand.  This means that the first typists of Furrae would have been slower overall, and they could have developed a more efficient keyboard configuration without having to worry about the jamming and key return issues afflicting the first typewriters.

However, this is a double edged sword, as it becomes harder to design any configuration would make it physically possible for someone like Regina to reach all the letters of the alphabet without moving the position of their wrists.  If I recall correctly, being forced to move the wrists leads to less efficient typing, as well as increased repetitive strain injuries, so that would have been avoided in any keyboard design.  Perhaps in the case of people with just three digits on each hand, the thumb would play a larger role than just striking the space bar and actually be responsible for pressing at least a few of the letter keys, which could lead to some interesting keyboard configurations.

Are there any IRL configurations in which the thumbs are used for more than just the space bar?

[Hodgelett]

I'd imagine the thumb would be in control of all the extraneous keys we use - shift, control, command, alt.
Probably like the click-wheel on a drawing tablet.

[MSpears]

Heh.  I created an account for the sole purpose of replying to this.

My guess would be some variant on a "chorded" keyboard with three keys for each hand.

The original chorded keyboard was designed by Douglas Englebart in 1968, and further developed by Xerox PARC, and was fitted to the first Xerox Alto computers.  It had only five keys, and was operated by the non-mouse hand; you needed to use the keyboard in conjunction with the 3 buttons on the mouse to type the entire alphanumeric character set.

The keys themselves represented binary digits; for example, in Engelbart's original mapping, the five keys represented 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16, enough for 31 characters.  So if the lowercase letters a-z were assigned to the numbers 1-26, then to type the letter "z", you pressed the 2nd, 4th, and 5th keys simultaneously (binary 11010 = 26)

With two fingers and a thumb on each hand, you could add a 6th key to represent 32.  That's enough to generate 63 characters (1+2+4+8+16+32).  You could add a seventh key (a toggle key) to act as a Caps Lock to allow another 63 characters.  So, you could assign a-z to 1-26, and the numbers 0-9 to 48-57.  Other punctuation could be slotted in to 27-47 and 58-63.  Upper case letters and !@#$%^&*() would be the same, but with the "Caps Lock" on.

For a real-world application, the keyboards used by courtroom stenographers are chorded keyboards (though different than the one described here).  It is significantly faster than a QWERTY keyboard... some stenographers can reach speeds of 300 words per minute, and the record is 375 wpm, though it takes quite a lot of practice to get that good, up to 3 years.

If it's not a chorded keyboard... well, I know one person who types faster with two fingers than I do with all ten (and I can type over 100 wpm on a QWERTY).

[Tuyu]

When you're typing, you really never have more than two fingers on the keyboard at once--when you use shift to capitalize a letter you're typing at the same time. (Though those of us who need to access the extended unicode character set for accented characters might need to use three at once. Or if you need to hit ctrl-alt-delete.) So as long as the keyboard is large enough to accommodate someone with fat fingers, even someone like Matilda (two digits, no thumbs) or someone with tentacles instead of hands would be able to type effectively on an unmodified keyboard.

[Jasonrevall]

Do you think they have different keyboards in storage for different users? What if they have completely different input devices for people that don't have hands? That'd be interesting to see.

At least their situation isn't as bad as the two key typewriters in Equestria. I'm surprised they don't hire out secretary work to gryphons or diamond dogs there.