KeenEmpire wrote:Apparently, someone decided it would be a good idea to compress a foot-long, two-handed layout to something like 2-4 inches with tiny buttons; no wonder it's so inaccurate.
And what do touch screens do to improve that? They're about as tiny, and they're only worse in the sense that they don't give you tactile feedback. You constantly have to make an estimate about whether or not your finger is in the right spot.
Of course there's swype, but that doesn't feel comfortable at all. My nervous system wasn't made to swipe across a piece of glass all the time.
It makes sense to place a hardware keyboard as long as it provides a significant use. One example is that you can play games like Super Mario on it that way. You can do that with a touch screen, but it's not really the same, you're never as good at those games as when you have physical keys. And I'm not even much of a gamer myself, but it's certainly significant; people buy entire devices for such games.
tulip wrote:A colleague of mine will back you on this all the way, Paramultart.
I didn't know we're colleagues.
Levellass wrote:So windows has its start button back.
Which takes you right back tot he terrible intended-for-touchscreen thing everyone hates.
That's about as close to 'go to hell you whiners' I've ever seen from a dev team.
It seems to me like it's the other way around. Removing the button and relying on the screen edge gesture thing is exactly what made it so touchscreen-oriented and that's why everyone was whining. Now they're merely reverting the change, and still everyone is whining ('everyone' just consists out of different people now). I guess people are always whining.
I personally have no problem with the start button. It's just another way of accessing things. Ever since the task bar focuses on big icons without text, the space isn't exactly precious, so you might as well put a button there. Should the clock also be moved elsewhere simply because that space is reserved for open windows?
candyjack wrote:I lol'd at how that page calls it "The developer’s favourite OS." Every OS is the favourite one of that particular OS's developer..
I can truly say that KeenOS is a revolutionary and groundbreaking OS that supersedes all others. I say this not only as a user, but as the president of KeenSoft Inc.[/quote]
Someone should rebrand Ubuntu with Keen stuff. KeenOS sounds too original. How about Keenbuntu?
Paramultart wrote:KeenEmpire wrote:Paramultart wrote:Keyboards truly are the best input device. Everything else is sub-par.
Hardly;
steno gets you 100 more wpm with more accuracy.
[T]his technology is clearly marketed for people with hearing disabilities. Its main purpose is to speed up the rate at which captioners to do their thing in real-time. Nobody truly expects this to replace QWERTY.
Nobody expects Dvorak or Colemak to replace QWERTY either. Doesn't mean they aren't superior.
KeenEmpire wrote:
The "key for each letter" scheme you laud for some reason is, in fact, pretty darn inefficient. In addition to being slower, it forces every letter to be placed somewhere which, since you only have 8 typing fingers
I don't know about you, but I have ten. It's just that someone decided that the space bar is so important that not only is it reserved for
both thumbs, but it actually needs to be so wide that retracting your thumbs a bit is still not enough to leave the key. I could've easily been using four keys with my two thumbs. Instead, even reaching for the Alt key causes stain.
Paramultart wrote: Plus, there's always the ability to improve.
I thought your whole problem with stenotype was the steep learning curve? It's the same for people who aren't as good at QWERTY as you: they don't want to spend time improving their wpm, they just want to type.
Paramultart wrote:
The fastest QWERTY typer on record averages 216wpm.
I think averages are more helpful. A quick Google lookup tells me that the average is 41. Given, the people who don't have the self-confidence to even try touch-typing (and believe me, there's many) are weaklings who don't count, so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and estimate the real average at 60. The average lecturer talks at 170 wpm. Of course, students need a verbatim copy of the words, they just need to take notes, but 60 wpm is definitely not enough. No need for people to type faster, you said?
Paramultart wrote:
I don't see why anyone would need to type faster than 120
Sounds like a fine goal to me. And guess what kind of people have that as the average typing speed? That's right: stenotypists! Sure, it isn't the most reliable of sources, but Wikipedia actually names that exact number:
stenotype students are usually able to reach speeds of 100–120 wpm within six months
Paramultart wrote:
the English language isn't efficient
The English language is very efficient. It has hundreds of thousands of words and the grammar is pretty consistent as well. It's the way we write the language down, and, since recently, type it, that isn't efficient. For some reason, people felt like just writing down the sounds we make would be way too simple, so they invented all these symbolic characters that stand for different sounds each time and often need to be paired together to make one sound. If only we could have a phonetic system. One that actually focuses on capturing the vowels and consonants... Oh wait, that exists, and it's called stenography!
Paramultart wrote:
Also, call me old fashioned, but I think that people should learn how to spell properly.
People are generally terrible spellers as it is, and there's debate on whether or not "TXT SPEAK" is actually contributing to this epidemic of illiteracy. From that standpoint alone, I don't see phonetic keyboards to be any improvement. (Aside from the practical use by professional transcriptionists, as previously mentioned)
Oh, I'm with you on that. It's extremely annoying to see poor spelling and it signifies laziness and utter carelessness to a disrespectful degree. However, the whole reason we need to learn how to spell in the first place, is because we're used to an irrational, symbolic alphabet that doesn't precicely represent the words themselves, but only in combination with a codex that deciphers them to the actual words, and that everyone just needs to learn to memorize. Most people have. That codex is called a word book. It tells me whether or not crow rhymes with drow (nobody knows, since it was invented as a written word, not a spoken one) and if finale sounds akin to adage (it doesn't).