Yet another keypad idea

[Dylan McCall]

Aha! That's just like one I had dreamed up, except less bloated and very
sensible. Great job actually doing it; this is very intuitive. I can see
that working really well with dragging the stylus through the buttons, with
no need for multiple clicks. That could lead to a sort of intuitive graphiti
pad -- even moreso with a few graphics effects, where hot spots appear at
positions relative to the stylus only if there is a letter in that
direction.

Unfortunately, you seem to draw letters in a completely different direction
than I do. I can see this potentially being user configurable, where one
could create his own patterns for letters. Just drag the stylus to draw an
"e" as you want, and the system picks up the order in which you drag it
through hot spots. I think that could really be the ultimate handwriting
style input, finally accepting and building on the fact that people all draw
letters differently, and that kind of stuff cannot be unlearned. This way
one's keyboard is specially fit for him, which would be really unique!
(Building on the "more than 9 buttons" suggestion, that user configuration
could include setting the sensitivity, which would boost the number of hot
spots).

Great work, OJW. This is way ahead of any qwerty layout. Much more suited to
a touch screen.
I have some spare time tomorrow, so I will see if I can come up with an
example of my own so we can compare notes. Seeing your demo here shows that
it's actually a surprisingly clean thing to achieve, code wise.

Bye,
-Dylan McCall

On 9/8/07, OJW <openmoko at blibbleblobble.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Just playing with another idea for text-entry:
>
> http://almien.co.uk/Keypad/
>
> The idea is to be able to type mixed letters / numbers / symbols /
> control-characters without having to look at the screen when typing.  It
> takes a while to pick-up, but should be easy to use once you see how it
> works.
>
> Only implemented as a javascript demo for now, but imagine it as
> finger-app
> (perhaps transparently overlaid on an application).  Only tested on
> firefox,
> sorry!
>
> Regards,
>
> OJW
>
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