Next Generation T9 Keyboard Technology 150
Iddo Genuth writes "Cliff Kushler, the inventor of the T9 keyboard technology for numeric keypads, has developed a new alphanumeric entry technology for touch-screen laptops and Smartphone devices. This latest technology, named Swype, works with an on-screen QWERTY keyboard similar to ones found on Windows Mobile and the iPhone. The difference from the usual method of typing in the letters is that a finger or stylus is used to slide in the first letter, then without lifting the finger, the user continues writing the entire word. Only once the word is completed can the finger be lifted off. According to the developers, this leads to a much faster way of 'typing,' or as we might call it soon, 'swiping.'"
An entire generation will be thinking (Score:5, Funny)
"Swyper no swyping"!
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Die, Dora, die!
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Two generations, actually: those who watch Dora, and those who have kids who watch Dora.
swipe post (Score:1, Funny)
first swipe
Finally (Score:5, Interesting)
This looks much more promising, and will hopefully be preventing the smartboard users from running back to a physical keyboard just to type something after using the mouse in front of the actual screen.
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I"mm tesdinbv one now and iys no top bnaf.
Dvorak? (Score:5, Interesting)
All these virtual keyboards are hard-coded for QWERTY, which makes even less sense for that kind of device than for a modern keyboard!
Dvorak should be an option, along with alphabetical order.
Actually for this thing, there's probably a whole new layout that's optimal. (That's an exercise for the reader to invent.)
Re:Dvorak? (Score:5, Insightful)
say what? Dvorak keyboards are great if you want to type in what amounts to two different languages, and it's designed to accommodate speed and efficiency for ten fingers, not one finger and two thumbs.
If you are going to break away from the standard qwerty keyboard, why not try to do something that makes sense for two thumbs and a finger? Understanding that you would have two circular areas for common keys, and best to have them arranged so that you get best efficiency switching between thumbs on alternating letters.
T9 is meant for touch tone keypads, this swipe is designed for efficiency on soft keyboards. If you want to maximize efficiency for thumbs, start all over again please.
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I like the number-pad thingy, but I don't like having to press the same key 6 times.
1-2 should give a capital "A" while 3-2 should give a capital "C" and 6-2 should give a lower-case "c"; 7-2 would just give a "2".
Also, the iPhone's prediction algorithm is f'ed.
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The Storm does something like that. In portrait mode, it defaults to SureType (2 letters per "key" in a QWERTY-like layout), and in landscape it goes to full QWERTY.
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Optimization for two fingers may be similar to the one stylus optimization done for the Palm desktop a while ago. : http://www.fitaly.com/palm/palmfitaly.htm [fitaly.com]
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The Sidekick allows you to use both hands to hold the device, two thumbs typing, and also has two buttons for fingers much the same way that nintendo game controllers do. It is possible to use more than thumbs with the two hands holding the device posture.
Re:Dvorak? (Score:5, Funny)
Actually for this thing, there's probably a whole new layout that's optimal. (That's an exercise for the reader to invent.)
Introducing the patented, copywritten hunt-and-peck touchscreen keyboard! Perfect for touchscreens of all types, and optimized for the elderly! And as an added bonus, pay shipping and handling to receive 2 hunt-and-peck keyboards! Only 2 easy payments of $19.95!
and one very difficult payment of $49.99
Order now!
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copywritten
ARGH! The inner Grammar Nazi within me screams in a bloodied rage.
copywriting [wikipedia.org] is completely different from copyrighting [wikipedia.org].
Re:Dvorak? (Score:5, Insightful)
Having been in mixed Dvorak, Qwerty, and Abcdefg environments, and having been on a quest for the ultimate keyboard for the past 10 years, I'm pretty confident that Qwerty is *good enough* until something truly different comes along.
Dvorak *can* run a little faster than Qwerty for typing, but not so much that you'd see an appreciably speed increase for nomal use. And as Dvorak has been around for about 80 years now [earthlink.net], I don't think anyone is getting in on the wave of the future by using it. Similarly, you'd be surprised how hard it is to use an alphabetized keyboard after years of Qwerty or Dvorak usage. The brain just doesn't change over that easily.
Unless an alternative layout increased speeds 100% or so, I'd keep things accessible. Just use Qwerty, and move on.
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The point of dvorak is not typing speed, but keeping your hands on the home row as much as possible. I typed on Dvorak exclusively the last few years, it's made my wrists feel a lot better. But I don't type faster, perhaps a bit more accurate.
Also, with the ease of changing it in most OSes, I don't think it's anything but personal choice anymore.
If you want something that may be better, try the Neo layout though. It's for the german language, but it may be good for english as well:
http://de.wikipedia.org [wikipedia.org]
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I typed on Dvorak exclusively the last few years, it's made my wrists feel a lot better. But I don't type faster, perhaps a bit more accurate.
do you have some numbers? on a QWERTY layout I seem to have about a 2% error rate (assuming a backspace press counts as one error -- probably more like 0.2-0.5%, because I tend to smash the backspace key multiple times when fixing errors). my sample size is ~20M keypresses.
other interesting numbers would be:
I doubt Dvorak would help with speed or accuracy in my case. and the QWERTY layout has never given me any hand trouble, while I do ge
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Nah, I don't have the numbers you want. Most analysis goes towards words. For instance, I would recognized that Dvorak generally isn't optimal for coding c and c style langages either although I use lisp mostly and in that, Qwerty & Dvorak are identical, as it would be for the space, a, enter, and keypad keys.
I found the English Neo layout site, it has more numbers scrolling down, but it's generally considering words, as well:
http://pebbles.schattenlauf.de/layout/index_us.html [schattenlauf.de]
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Re:Dvorak? (Score:5, Interesting)
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but onscreen QWERTY will always have the advantage that people are used to the layout.
Only for hunt-and-peckers.
I touch-type, and I have to search the keys in the virtual keyboard of my cell. That's because when I type I don't think in the keys but in the whole word and it then appears in the screen.
For people like me, an alphabetical order is way more natural. I totally know that order.
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Try Fitaly ( http://www.fitaly.com/palm/palmfitaly.htm [fitaly.com] ). I've used it on the Palm, and it really is quite nice, once you get used to it.
It also uses a swipe method to determine capitol letters, so no shift key is needed.
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Dvorak is designed for efficient touch typing. Virtual keyboards are inherently poor for touch typing (you can't feel which "keys" your fingers are hitting), and most are too small to even attempt it. If you could convince me there is a significant proportion of people who known Dvorak but can't even type one- or two-fingered on a QWERTY I might believe that there is a real need, but I suspect that group of users is vanishingly small.
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The guys over at ShapeWriter have already beaten you (me?) to it.
:)
They call it the ATOMIK keyboard layout, and there's a short demo here [shapewriter.com]. The learning curve is probably a little steep, but I would guess that it's less than learning QWERTY, partly because you're allowed to look at the keyboard the entire time.
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Well, when I was a wannabe Palm hacker, I always saw the need for an onscreen keyboard that didn't follow the QWERTY layout. (I always believed that there was a more speedy way to input things than drawing each letter one at a time) This layout is anything but optimized for one-finger-or-pen-point-swiped-input. So in my own search for perfection, I collided with the ATOMIK keyboard and relevant thesis from IBM research ( 1 [ibm.com], 2 [ibm.com], 3 [ibm.com]) Unfortunately, English is just my second language so anything optimized for Eng
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I would think that, since this input method is based on moving a finger between letters in a continuous motion, it would probably be a Good Thing if commonly used letters were far apart, or far enough apart to make each character entered a long enough "swipe" to feel natural and ergonomic.
I am a bit curious about how you were to type a word like "letter," where you need to make 2 "Ts" at once. Maybe after you enter the first T, you do a little loop and end up where you started.
You can, by the way, get a
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Yes, and it's already been invented a few times:
WritingPad (Score:5, Informative)
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What Google thinks of Swype (Score:5, Funny)
Google's ad engine selected "WI Portable Restrooms -- We Offer Portable Restrooms in Every Configuration & Price Range" for this page.
OK, back to the drawing board on product name.
Writingpad, in an App Store near you (Score:2)
Already exists. I think it was out the first week the iPhone App Store was open. Works pretty decently.
Tag fuckthegovernment? (Score:2)
Really
Because fucktheuspto (Score:2)
What does the government have to do with T9 keyboards?
The government granted a monopoly on T9 input to Tegic (now part of Nuance).
This was "swype'd" from Dr Zhai, of IBM, research (Score:5, Informative)
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Sounds familiar (Score:2)
The difference from the usual method of typing in the letters is that a finger or stylus is used to slide in the first letter, then without lifting the finger, the user continues writing the entire word. Only once the word is completed can the finger be lifted off.
That's kind of like how a Ouija board is operated, isn't it? More proof that Cliff Kushler is Satan, I guess.
Rob
One Word - Patent! (Score:2)
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The internet has ruined it for all of us. I can't even get a stiffy anymore unless it involves a girl shitting into a cup.
writingpad iphone app (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.shapewriter.com/iphone.html [shapewriter.com]
Dasher? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Is this anything like Dasher?
I thought so by reading the post, but the linked articles shows that it's not the case.
I still think a Dasher-like system may be a viable input system for keyboard-less devices, though. Modulo some fine tuning, of course...
And it has Caps Lock!!! (Score:1)
Like, everyone needs caps lock don't we? ffs!
A simple question (Score:2)
How does it handle double letters?
For example, would it type my username as Goobermunch or Gobermunch? How would it know the difference? How does Swyping accommodate the William Wallaces of the world? Are they doomed to being Wiliam Walaces?
The press release leaves the question open. The ability to detect a repeated input seems to be an advantage of keypad type input. Perhaps, if you dwell for a sufficiently long period of time, it will count the character beneath the stylus twice.
--AC
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I got to try out Swype last fall at the TC50. It's pretty great technology, as I remember to do a double letter you just needed to loop around the letter.
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I don't know about Swype, but when using Shapewriter [shapewriter.com], an iPhone notepad application that works (suspiciously) similar as other have pointed out, you just ignore double letters. I just tried "William Wallace" on ShapeWriter by tracing "Wiliam Walace" and it came out just fine. If there is an ambiguity
neener (Score:2)
the ring design (Score:2)
I had a similar idea, character's aranged in rings growing from the center.
! @ # $ % ^ & *
( l f k p r z )
- b g a o v =
[ c h e * u w ]
; d n i y x '
\ , . ? !
Where A, E, I, O, and U form the center most ring. Inside that ring is a double, shift, space, and backspace buttons. Consinants would have to be arranged meaningfully (I just tossed them up alphabetically and swapped the vowels)
I'm highly tempted to try writtin
StickyKeys (Score:1)
Only once the word is completed can the finger be lifted off.
Better not be dyslexic around devices of this kind, or it'll stick to your finger indefinitely.
It sure lends the term "StickyKeys" a new meaning!
Make use of the medium (Score:2)
I was thinking about on-screen keyboards just yesterday. I usually avoid them, preferring real keyboards, but I was thinking, if your only choice is on screen, how would you want it to work?
My real keyboard is optimized to minimize hand and finger movement, by placing the keys I use most commonly near where my hands are supposed to be. However, it is limited by the medium: the keys have to be in the same place all the time. An on-screen keyboard doesn't have this limitation: you can put the "keys" wherever
Suretype (Score:2, Interesting)
GNOME has better (Score:2)
GNOME has better virtual-keyboard. You just type wanted letter and then you start moving mouse towards other letters. It needs and dictionary to know what words you are wanting to type and it predicts the needed letters bigger ones. So you can hit them more easily. You should find it from usability-menu.
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Shark-like (Score:3, Interesting)
This looks like the Shark typing method [ibm.com] created for IBM a few years back.
I really liked the Shark idea when it first came out, so it's good to see something similar again. (Plus Shark worked on non-QWERTY 'boards as well, you just changed the settings on its initialisation)
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I don't know about this dragging from letter to letter system. It'd feel too much like I'm risking waking the dead [wikipedia.org].
I introducw... (Score:1)
I wonder if this will cause RSI? (Score:1)
I've lived with RSI since 1993 - you get used to recognising things that do not help ergonomically. This looks like one of those things.
One of the major problems with RSI is that prolonged activation of muscle groups leads to fatigue. The term for this is static loading.
This is why click and release mouse behaviour (to activate menus, then click again to choose) is better for your health than the alternative method (click and hold, release to choose) because the alterna
Good. Now extend this to touch keyboard + monitor (Score:3, Interesting)
As one of the many poor typists out there, I don't see why we still have to choose between looking at the keyboard and learning to touch type. A touch keyboard, detecting my finger positions, could coordinate with a translucent virtual kbd on screen that also displayed my finger positions. The virtual kbd would be made to appear and disappear with appropriate gestures. Addional feedback would include haptic, sound, & 'hover' keys. And, as the whole thing is virtual, it would reconfigure on the fly to cope with any language, which simplifies life for the PC manufacturer. The touch keyboard would still need some kind of display but it could be pretty basic. Oh dear - I hope I haven't described this in too much detail. I wouldn't want some poor patent troll to starve...
The Sony Ericsson P1 method :) (Score:1)
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It is called "rocker" keyboard. I got a P1i here myself and I believe T9 is involved in the word completion. We are a bit cheating on P1 since the device shows the words on top beginning with the letters we typed. I heard Blackberry was first to use that keyboard variant.
BTW If you don't know already, the word completion trick is in Settings/Device/Text Input/Predictive Text.
Of course most P1 users mix keyboard,scroll wheel and even handwriting recognition.
Really sad thing that UIQ died in hands of Sony and
Sounds Ok for English..what about other languages? (Score:2)
It sounds ok for every day English use, but what about other languages?
And what if a word is not found? how is the word then typed?
Re:bleh (Score:4, Informative)
But when typing a normal SMS, T9 predictive input makes it so much easier for me.
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Programing the T9 system to make is learn the words I use was half the fun. It was like training a spam filter to accept purposefully misspelled words, only without the end result being that only spam got through and all the valid email was filtered.
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First, I never use that T9 stuff, because it never chooses the right word. Guessing the word that you want to type isn't convenient, it's annoying. Also, it doesn't allow for purposefully misspelled words and text slang.
At least in good recent implementations it does usually choose the right word, because in addition to having generic word frequency data it learns the most common words you personally use. You can also add your own words to the dictionary, so you can use as many purposefully mispelled words and slang terms as you like. You can always drop out of T9 mode for unusual requirements.
I usually dislike people who don't use T9; they tend to be the idiots who write things like "l8r" (7 key-presses, assuming you can
Re:bleh (Score:4, Funny)
Holy crap, you are an idiot!
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Of course, there are more problems with T9 than writing "l8r" (as your "a good T9 implementation" quote starts to hint). There are other systems (e.g. WordWise and LetterWise [eatoni.com]) that don't have many of the problems of T9, but you are usually stuck with what your phone has (or perhaps not if you have a smartphone).
Back to topic though, I am trying to draw paths with one finger on my PDA, and it certainly takes me a lot more time and effort than tapping (usually with two fingers). And all this without actually
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If I understood the idea correctly, tracing paths between letters gives you a curve, or at least a broken line with points where individual letters should stand. That means that, with practice, you simply draw a curve describing the word you want to enter.
Having started learning Chinese a few months ago, I'm beginning to wonder if we're re-inventing the wheel here...
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For the life of me I could not figure out "l8r". I kept seeing I ate her, and thought who in the heck would keep saying that...
Then I saw the first letter was not an I, but an L and it says later...
Why do I have this problem... Its called dyslexia, and I have pretty bad... Even my wife often looks at me in pure puzzlement.
Personally I hate T9 since I can never get out a message for the life of me. I completely prefer the keyboard.
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Considering the price for sending one message in the US, compressing later into l8r lets you send more text for the same price :-)
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I usually dislike people who don't use T9; they tend to be the idiots who write things like "l8r"
You sir, are certainly a judgmental idiot. I agree with the GP. I have a poor opinion of T9, because it rarely ever gets the right word. I usually write specific messages that don't fit to the canned word guesses it has. Trying to use it often turns out to be more work than it saves, at least for me. And I don't write in leet or in the SMS lingo.
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I find it interesting that you apparently judged me "certainly a judgemental idiot" on the basis of one sentence where I observed a correlation. FYI I don't dislike people for not using T9, though the number of people I've got to know who use txt-speak and haven't found to be in some way rather obnoxious is extremely small.
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Personally, I've let the whole SMS thing slide until recently - the whole concept of messaging text with 12 buttons is unpleasant and something that I didn't feel like paying to use (and yes, I tried the T9 thing - found it just as bad).
This changed when I bought a Samsung Pixon and, finally, I'm happy with an SMS interface - touch screen qwerty available by rotating the device by 90 degrees, and each keypress gets a physical feedback via a subtle vibration. It has a predictive T9 type of interface too, bu
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I know mine sure stumbled over "rdpadily". But more to the point I had to look at each individual word in that sentence and not just the whole sentence as I normally would.
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Yeah. Read speed on that sentence was ~50% of normal. You'd better have something REALLY fucking good to say if you're gonna make me work that hard to decipher it. ;)
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Nor does it predict when I'm typing an expletive. Seriously, that annoys me (I swear a lot because I have no imagination).
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First, I never use that T9 stuff, because it never chooses the right word.
Haven't you ever considered, that the latter is caused by the former? Or is your phone just that outdated.
T9 learns your word preferences, new words, and unused words in every modern phone I hah in the last years.
My T9 dictionary knew nearly all of my slang words after a month of usage. On my next phone, i even created an SMS with my most used non-included words on the first day.
For purposefully misspelled words, there's a simple solution: Spell it right, and then replace just the letter(s) you want to chan
Re:bleh (Score:4, Funny)
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I got the idea from a comedian -- Seth McFarlane -- in that Family Guy episode where Peter considers a vasectomy and a barbershop quartet goes into a meandering number about sexual harassment and how the chick had too huge a rack to be talking about that kind of stuff [youtube.com](skip to 1:07)
But I guess that's the definition of the word...I-RON-EEEEY!
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I'd like to see the accuracy of this system in a real-life setting. On phones with the T9 technology, I found it was faster for me to hit a key three times than to backspace every time the software made a mistake (which was frequently)...
Backspace? Mistake? It's never wrong in the sense that it never suggests a word that can't be made of the letters on the keys you pressed. Erm, you do know how to scroll through the list of suggested words on your phone, don't you? You do know that if it doesn't have a word you can add it to the dictionary and the word you enter will appear in the message you are composing, don't you? The only reason you should have to backspace is if you made a mistake, you don't want to add a word to the dictionary or you
ACRES of irrelevant words (Score:2)
Erm, you do know how to scroll through the list of suggested words on your phone
But if you try to type BASES (22737) and have to scroll through ACRES of irrelevant words [cam.ac.uk], you're not likely to be someone who CARES about T9, and using that mode isn't likely to be in the CARDS for you. How many keystrokes does it take to scroll through this list?
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Er, mine gave me about 5 commonly used options for Bases. Your article says that the word "bases" the WORST possible clash, and the maximum words to pick from is 11. Is an 11 word list too much to handle? I did have to scroll the first time, so I suppose that counts as about 8 keypresses, with no waiting. That's verses a keypress, pause long enough for two keypresses, and four keypresses, which is 5 actual keypresses but is about as slow as 8 keypresses. Also, if I have to type Bases again in the near
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Seriously dude, I's so serious I used seriously to like, start two paragraphs in a row.
Seriously.
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I don't know what you're typing, but T9 vs cycling the letters for me is a difference of 200-300% more button mashing, plus waiting for duplicate letters.
Perhaps if you stuck with real words and not made up ones it would be easier? I do find if I want to type a made-up word, I either have to add it to the T9 dictionary or switch over to abc input mode (the former takes longer, but I only ever have to do it once).
My only real trouble with the T9 on my LG is it uses the touchscreen only to choose between poss