Here’s a keyboard idea, which I’m writing up here on the off-chance that MS hasn’t already patented it. I was trying to figure out a better way of entering left-parenethesis and right-parenthesis on my keyboard (since I used them all the time when I’m writing code (and also when writing blog entries)). Currently, I have to do the shift-9 combination which is poor because I have to move my fingers off their home keys, and also involves a nasty stretch. However, there doesn’t look like many better alternatives since I use all of the non-shifted keys regularly – I’d find it inconvienient if they got remapped to ‘(‘ and ‘)’. So if there’s no unshifted keys left then it looks like I’m always going to have to use some kind of shift key?
No, we can take inspiration from the mouse. I suggest using double-clicks on the keyboard as a way of entering indicating alternative inputs. So, two presses on the ‘9’ key in rapid succession would mean left-parenthesis and two presses in rapid succession on the ‘0’ key would mean right-parenthesis. Obviously this impacts on my ability to type “99” and “00” quickly, but in an average day I typed hundred of parentheses and hardly ever need to type “99” or “00”. On the rare occasion that I need to type them, I can simply leave a little pause (sufficient to exceed the double-click timeout) just like you do when you’re sending txts on a mobile phone without predictive texting.
Alternatively, you could use the length of time which the key was held down for to indicate an alternative input mode. Currently, almost all the keys will just auto-repeat when held down. How often is auto-repeat useful? For delete and the cursor keys it is often useful, but for the other hundred or so keys, it is less useful. So why not hijack that behaviour for more useful purposes?
Finally, we can use “chords” to indicate a whole different set of behaviour. Currently, if you hold down, say, “f” and “j” at the same time the computer will act as if you pressed “f” followed by “j” (or vice versa). It doesn’t notice that you deliberately pressed them both at the same time. If we make the computer respond differently to multiple simultaneous keypresses, we open up yet another set of possibilities for keyboard input without removing our fingers from the home keys. Effectively, we’re using the keys “a” to “z” as shift keys themselves. Clearly, you’d want to minimize the chances of triggering them accidentally whilst typing normal text so you may want to choose unlikely combinations (such as f+j) which are unlikely to occur in your normal typing (unless you write about fjords lots).
This gets rid of the need to move my hands off the home keys, and also gets rid of the awkward stretches caused by shift/ctrl combinations (although putting ctrl in the place where caps lock usually lives helps a lot too). Once I have figured out a way to get X11 to handle these cases, I’ll post it up. I also think it’s likely that keyboards from older computers used these tricks and more, but have been forgotten in the passage of time. Certainly the Spectrum used to minimize keystrokes whilst programming by automatically switching between modes as you typed, which was confusing to the uninitiated but quite efficient once mastered.