Virtual QWERTY Keyboards to be used with Fingers...

[Thomas Gstädtner]

I don't think qwerty is what we want really.
Also that it requires only one keypress per letter is not fully true, as you
have to use "shift" very often (capitals, special charakters, ...).
Imho the display on the neo is way to small to have qwerty. The iphone
shows, that eben the much bigger screen (without a high bezel!) is not
really great for a extremely basic qwerty variant.
I'm currently working on another system that requires one drag per sign (no
matter what sign, be it capitals, special chars, ...) and can be extremely
easy and fast with a proper layout.
You can see a basic preview here:
http://videos.gstaedtner.net/enter_neo_native.mkv
I'm a total newbie in programming, but I expect some results in the next
time.
The system allows 144 key-combinations with buttons big enough to easily hit
them with your thumbs.
It allows fast one-handed writing of all ascii-signs and it will be very
flexible with the layouts.
So it would be possible to have a layout that allows single-click without
dragging for keys needed often in a row (backspace/del e.g.), as you can see
with the "o" on the video. I'm writing "HelloWorld" there (you can see the
output on the terminal, as there is only a stdout-function at moment), the
"Hello" to show the interface, the "World" to show the speed (that will
improve quite a bit so that the interface will be fast enough to follow you
:) ).
Of course in the end it will be on the bottom of the screen as the old
matchbox-keyboard is (at moment I'm working on the matchbox integration), so
you can hold it in your right hand and type with your right thumb without
needing the left hand at all.
It doesn't even need prediction to be fast and easy, although it would be a
possibility to enhance it.
There's a tarball with the source, but not ready to be usable, so I will
release the code later.
Interested people can have the link and maybe an ipkg, but I'd recommend at
least to wait until the matchbox-integration is ready.

On 2/29/08, "Marco Trevisan (Treviño)" <mail at 3v1n0.net> wrote:
>
> Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) ha scritto:
>
> > i intend to first give a predictive qwerty keyboard a go - why? well
> qwerty is
> > familiar and requires only 1 press per letter. it seems the qtopia
> predictive
> > kbd works pretty well on the gta01 and gta02 - so now it's a cvhance to
> improve
> > on it wiht configurable layout, keys etc. etc.
>
>
> To agree again, in these days I've tried a Motorola A1200E [1] and it
> has a built-in predictive full qwerty keyboard [2] (not like the
> openmoko one, this is better imho since it only shows the possible words
> using the written combination of chars) that has been made to be used
> with a stylus, but I'm able to use it with no problems with fingers
> (both using the thumb and the forefinger) with a good speed!
> Imho a keyboard like the Motoming one is quite good for wrigin after a
> little "training" :P
>
>     Treviño
>
> [1] http://wiki.openezx.org/A1200
> [2] http://www.flickr.com/photos/trevi55/2299163770/
>
>
> --
> Treviño's World - Life and Linux
> http://www.3v1n0.net/
>
>
>
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