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The QWERTY keyboard layout was designed in the 1870s in part to make it hard to type so fast that typewriter keys would jam. With text-to-speech and the gesture

The QWERTY keyboard layout was designed in the 1870s in part to make it hard to type so fast that typewriter keys would jam. With text-to-speech and the gesture and movement recognition abilities described in this article, is typing really input method we should be optimizing?

PaulHoule 2y ago
I dunno. I find speaking to computers (say Alexa, Siri, Cortana, …) to be tiring compared to speaking with people and slower than typing. Typing in VR with visual tracking or controllers is practical if you need to log into something or bash out a Tweet, but you want to get a real keyboard aligned with your space if you are going to type much. The myoelectric device that was used with Meta’s Orion demo could lead to something better, you can get signals from a EEG or my electric array and train it and train the human to communicate in symbols across it. With a direct brain interface, do any better. Some of my distinct style as an HN commenter comes from my perpetual fight with my iPad. I am sitting in the couch holding it in landscape mode with two hands and typing with just two thumbs. I can do it crazy fast. The text input system has a predictive model which catches and fixes many mistakes that I make (don’t want to turn it off) but also injects errors of its own. (It just did it.). I don’t catch all of these so you find grammatically probable but semantically wrong errors all over what I write.
- exe34 2y ago
  I'd love some chording gloves or even just something that senses finger motion from say forearm muscle activity. I'd use it with my current laptops - just lean back and twitch your fingers
  - sturgill 2y ago
    Agreed. Pair it with glasses (like the Orion) as a connected monitor and you could hack away at a side project anywhere and everywhere. I actually tend to do a lot of coding in bed and would love this kind of setup. Or while on an airplane where space is a premium (I hate having my laptop on that stupid tray table). Pair the glasses with bone conductive headphones and you could be immersed in your world without the silliness of the Apple Vision. And you wouldn’t have to turn anything off during takeoffs or landings…
  - inhumantsar 2y ago
    agreed! that's apparently the (eventual) goal of the wristband Meta is using with the Orion headset. if it could be refined to the point where it'd be as capable as smartphone thumb typing and deployed as a standalone input device would be a real game changer.
- two_handfuls 2y ago
  I find text with grammatically probable but semantically wrong errors much harder to read than text with spelling or grammatical mistakes. Basically, it makes the errors harder to spot and the search space to find what was meant larger.
danielbln 2y ago
I believe it's a misconception that QWERTY was designed to slow down typing. > There’s some dispute over how and why Sholes and Glidden arrived at the QWERTY layout. Some historians have argued that it solved a jamming problem by spacing out the most common letters in English; others, particularly more recent historians, hold that it was designed specifically to help telegraphists avoid common errors when transcribing Morse code. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/origins-qwerty-keyboard-typewriter-180982726/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/origins-qwerty-key...
pessimizer 2y ago
Talking all day, and/or waving your arms around in empty space, is absolutely exhausting and a regression from typing. This paper is about people who are walking around AFK, wearing AR glasses. edit: ok, waving your arms around all day might be good for the delts and lats, but shoulder RSI is no better than hand RSI.
croes 2y ago
Text-to-speech is hard to do if you are in a phone call at the same time
TeMPOraL 2y ago
> is typing really input method we should be optimizing? Operating large amount of keys with all your fingers to compose and invoke complex commands is a powerful idea - especially given that people can and do learn to navigate complex systems this way intuitively, in the same way drivers eventually internalize the interface and stop thinking about it. Having those buttons labeled with letters in a particular layout - that's not where the power of this input method comes from. Perhaps it was a necessary Schelling point, though - QWERTY keyboard is a good default. Without it, computer vendors would be tempted to experiment with their input panels, get creative with controls, making them effectively unique per model.
- heroprotagonist 2y ago
  Apple already screws with people's head remapping how the keys work to psychologically impose a bit of vendor lock-in once they get used to it. I swear, every time I have to use a Mac and the End key accidentally goes to the end of the document instead of the end of the line, I get a picture in my head of this smug looking guy in a black turtleneck laughing at me. (And yes, Mac people, I know about Karabiner. Don't bother telling me how I can adapt or how great and superior your Mac is.)
  - Skunkleton 2y ago
    > the End key Surprised to hear that there is a user of this button. I don't think I've ever used them, and in the last decade or so I've bought keyboards that don't have them at all.
    - AndrewDucker 2y ago
      How do you move the cursor to the end of the current line of text you're editing?
      - fweimer 2y ago
        $ or Ctrl-E.
m463 2y ago
I thought part of it was so salesmen could quickly type the word: typewriter all characters of which were on the top row of keys.
- maleldil 2y ago
  That doesn't sound true. The quickest way would be for the keys to be in the home row.
  - m463 2y ago
    After it purchased the device, Remington made several adjustments—including switching the period and "R" keys, so that salesmen could impress customers by typing "TYPEWRITER" using the keys in the top row—which created a keyboard with what is essentially the modern QWERTY layout. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sholes_and_Glidden_typewriter#QWERTY_keyboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sholes_and_Glidden_typewriter#...
    - ivanbakel 2y ago
      And on the full-fledged QWERTY layout article, this claim is called "not formally substantiated". The actual citation in your link is from a collection of essays on science, paleontology, and evolutionary theory - exactly the kind of place that such an apocryphal claim could have been repeated for the sake of a pithy anecdote, rather than a reliable source on the history of typewriter layouts. Wikipedia editors' tendency to duplicate information in sub-section summaries is a great pain, due largely to this problem - who keeps the editorial voice, references, etc. consistent across all these non-linked articles?
alanbernstein 2y ago
There is sometimes value in a private or silent channel. If public use becomes more common, I definitely hope not to hear people dictating to their devices.

PaulHoule 2y ago

I dunno. I find speaking to computers (say Alexa, Siri, Cortana, …) to be tiring compared to speaking with people and slower than typing. Typing in VR with visual tracking or controllers is practical if you need to log into something or bash out a Tweet, but you want to get a real keyboard aligned with your space if you are going to type much. The myoelectric device that was used with Meta’s Orion demo could lead to something better, you can get signals from a EEG or my electric array and train it and train the human to communicate in symbols across it. With a direct brain interface, do any better. Some of my distinct style as an HN commenter comes from my perpetual fight with my iPad. I am sitting in the couch holding it in landscape mode with two hands and typing with just two thumbs. I can do it crazy fast. The text input system has a predictive model which catches and fixes many mistakes that I make (don’t want to turn it off) but also injects errors of its own. (It just did it.). I don’t catch all of these so you find grammatically probable but semantically wrong errors all over what I write.

exe34 2y ago
I'd love some chording gloves or even just something that senses finger motion from say forearm muscle activity. I'd use it with my current laptops - just lean back and twitch your fingers
- sturgill 2y ago
  Agreed. Pair it with glasses (like the Orion) as a connected monitor and you could hack away at a side project anywhere and everywhere. I actually tend to do a lot of coding in bed and would love this kind of setup. Or while on an airplane where space is a premium (I hate having my laptop on that stupid tray table). Pair the glasses with bone conductive headphones and you could be immersed in your world without the silliness of the Apple Vision. And you wouldn’t have to turn anything off during takeoffs or landings…
- inhumantsar 2y ago
  agreed! that's apparently the (eventual) goal of the wristband Meta is using with the Orion headset. if it could be refined to the point where it'd be as capable as smartphone thumb typing and deployed as a standalone input device would be a real game changer.
two_handfuls 2y ago
I find text with grammatically probable but semantically wrong errors much harder to read than text with spelling or grammatical mistakes. Basically, it makes the errors harder to spot and the search space to find what was meant larger.

danielbln 2y ago

I believe it's a misconception that QWERTY was designed to slow down typing. > There’s some dispute over how and why Sholes and Glidden arrived at the QWERTY layout. Some historians have argued that it solved a jamming problem by spacing out the most common letters in English; others, particularly more recent historians, hold that it was designed specifically to help telegraphists avoid common errors when transcribing Morse code. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/origins-qwerty-keyboard-typewriter-180982726/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/origins-qwerty-key...

pessimizer 2y ago

Talking all day, and/or waving your arms around in empty space, is absolutely exhausting and a regression from typing. This paper is about people who are walking around AFK, wearing AR glasses. edit: ok, waving your arms around all day might be good for the delts and lats, but shoulder RSI is no better than hand RSI.

croes 2y ago

Text-to-speech is hard to do if you are in a phone call at the same time

TeMPOraL 2y ago

> is typing really input method we should be optimizing? Operating large amount of keys with all your fingers to compose and invoke complex commands is a powerful idea - especially given that people can and do learn to navigate complex systems this way intuitively, in the same way drivers eventually internalize the interface and stop thinking about it. Having those buttons labeled with letters in a particular layout - that's not where the power of this input method comes from. Perhaps it was a necessary Schelling point, though - QWERTY keyboard is a good default. Without it, computer vendors would be tempted to experiment with their input panels, get creative with controls, making them effectively unique per model.

heroprotagonist 2y ago
Apple already screws with people's head remapping how the keys work to psychologically impose a bit of vendor lock-in once they get used to it. I swear, every time I have to use a Mac and the End key accidentally goes to the end of the document instead of the end of the line, I get a picture in my head of this smug looking guy in a black turtleneck laughing at me. (And yes, Mac people, I know about Karabiner. Don't bother telling me how I can adapt or how great and superior your Mac is.)
- Skunkleton 2y ago
  > the End key Surprised to hear that there is a user of this button. I don't think I've ever used them, and in the last decade or so I've bought keyboards that don't have them at all.
  - AndrewDucker 2y ago
    How do you move the cursor to the end of the current line of text you're editing?
    - fweimer 2y ago
      $ or Ctrl-E.

m463 2y ago

I thought part of it was so salesmen could quickly type the word: typewriter all characters of which were on the top row of keys.

maleldil 2y ago
That doesn't sound true. The quickest way would be for the keys to be in the home row.
- m463 2y ago
  After it purchased the device, Remington made several adjustments—including switching the period and "R" keys, so that salesmen could impress customers by typing "TYPEWRITER" using the keys in the top row—which created a keyboard with what is essentially the modern QWERTY layout. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sholes_and_Glidden_typewriter#QWERTY_keyboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sholes_and_Glidden_typewriter#...
  - ivanbakel 2y ago
    And on the full-fledged QWERTY layout article, this claim is called "not formally substantiated". The actual citation in your link is from a collection of essays on science, paleontology, and evolutionary theory - exactly the kind of place that such an apocryphal claim could have been repeated for the sake of a pithy anecdote, rather than a reliable source on the history of typewriter layouts. Wikipedia editors' tendency to duplicate information in sub-section summaries is a great pain, due largely to this problem - who keeps the editorial voice, references, etc. consistent across all these non-linked articles?

alanbernstein 2y ago

There is sometimes value in a private or silent channel. If public use becomes more common, I definitely hope not to hear people dictating to their devices.