Popup keyboard layout
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What's CFP?
| Originally posted by karog: The popup keyboard for Find Shows is in alphabetical order. The CFP keyboard is in QWERTY format. One would have thought they would use the same keyboard throughout the system. Any thoughts on this curiosity? |
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And typewriter-like. You do remember those, don't you? I don't think it makes a lot of difference even though I do touch type on my remote. http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/smile.gif
In any case, I just thought it was curious that they wouldn't use a single piece of code for the keyboard.
| Originally posted by seanriddle: Maybe RTV's "user experience" team thought QWERTY was too "computer-like" for a TV appliance? When I'm using the remote, I don't really have a preference. It's a hassle either way. Sean |
In any case, I just thought it was curious that they wouldn't use a single piece of code for the keyboard.
The pop-up keyboard was one of the first GUI elements programmed for the ReplayTV OS. It was programmed before we actually had a use for it. ReplayDon (don’t think he’s ever posted here) wrote the control so that it could come up in either QWERTY style or Alphabetical style, but QWERTY layout has never been used in the public GUI except for the CFP field.
To me QWERTY is a convenience for hand position on a keyboard, that makes it easier to type, so I don’t think there is much -- if any -- advantage of having one on-screen where you’re moving a highlight around.
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-JustDoug
To me QWERTY is a convenience for hand position on a keyboard, that makes it easier to type, so I don’t think there is much -- if any -- advantage of having one on-screen where you’re moving a highlight around.
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-JustDoug
Joined
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971 Posts
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Doug,
Interestingly, I actually feel the same way. For me, the current layout (ie: not QWERTY) is actually very efficient since the cursor "wraps" in all four directions. I seem to be able to "type" using the on-screen keyboard very quickly.
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-Jim
ReplayTV: The only way to watch Iron Chef!
| Originally posted by JustDoug: To me QWERTY is a convenience for hand position on a keyboard, that makes it easier to type, so I don’t think there is much -- if any -- advantage of having one on-screen where you’re moving a highlight around. |
Interestingly, I actually feel the same way. For me, the current layout (ie: not QWERTY) is actually very efficient since the cursor "wraps" in all four directions. I seem to be able to "type" using the on-screen keyboard very quickly.
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-Jim
ReplayTV: The only way to watch Iron Chef!
Joined
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1,435 Posts
I'm pretty new here and have been playing with my new 3060, Great unit!
Anyhow I've been setting up the Pronto and gave it a simple QWERTY keyboard on a single screen along with a small navagator ring for quickly entering search text, lot fewer keystrokes than using the TV screen...
It's cool that the Replay responds to the Web TV Keyboard codes, the Pronto IS the TOOL!
Another cool way to use the Pronto is to put up the Replay Channel On Screen Menu and use ICON based tuning on the Pronto to Quickly Jump around the guide, read whats on and then hit a "go" key (select) and go to view that channel. This cuts down the "surf" delay.
I'd be happy to share it and would like to see if anyone else has done similar things with their Pronto. (Remote Central didn't have much for Replay)
Ed
Anyhow I've been setting up the Pronto and gave it a simple QWERTY keyboard on a single screen along with a small navagator ring for quickly entering search text, lot fewer keystrokes than using the TV screen...
It's cool that the Replay responds to the Web TV Keyboard codes, the Pronto IS the TOOL!
Another cool way to use the Pronto is to put up the Replay Channel On Screen Menu and use ICON based tuning on the Pronto to Quickly Jump around the guide, read whats on and then hit a "go" key (select) and go to view that channel. This cuts down the "surf" delay.
I'd be happy to share it and would like to see if anyone else has done similar things with their Pronto. (Remote Central didn't have much for Replay)
Ed
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Doug, the layout has nothing to do with HAND position, the layout was very carefully designed to minimize one big problem. Obviously this was designed in the days of manual typewriters and not computers, and early alphabetically ordered typewriters had a massive problem with stuck keys. When two levers right next to each other would be hit at the same or nearly the same time, the levers would get stuck or would jam or hit each other. You must have had that happen at some point when using an old fashioned typewriter. Well, to minimize that, they laid out the keys such that no two commonly combined keys were next to each other in the physical matrix of the levers. So if you look at the layout, you will see that there are no two keys next to each other that are very commonly combined. Things like TH, ST, QU, NG, IN, CH, etc. The combinations you see are more like QW, JK, SD, ZX, CV, BN, NM, etc. That was how the QWERTY layout came to be http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/smile.gif
Now that the issue is obviously gone, better designs for HAND layouts have been designed, like the dvorak keyboard and several others. Writers like jms use them since they spend most of their lives typing and need to be as efficient as possible. But I can't even use a MS natural keyboard, because although I can type faster than most touch-typists, I dont hold my hands like that at all, I use a long-refined version of the hunt and peck method that is quite efficient for me http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/wink.gif
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-=- Glenn -=-
| Originally posted by JustDoug: To me QWERTY is a convenience for hand position on a keyboard, that makes it easier to type, so I don’t think there is much -- if any -- advantage of having one on-screen where you’re moving a highlight around. |
Now that the issue is obviously gone, better designs for HAND layouts have been designed, like the dvorak keyboard and several others. Writers like jms use them since they spend most of their lives typing and need to be as efficient as possible. But I can't even use a MS natural keyboard, because although I can type faster than most touch-typists, I dont hold my hands like that at all, I use a long-refined version of the hunt and peck method that is quite efficient for me http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/wink.gif
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-=- Glenn -=-
Riker:
That’s cool. I’ve read various stories about how the layout came to be. I read something that said that when the typewriter was first introduced, all the letters to spell typewriter were put on the first line, making it easier for someone to demonstrate (and therefore sell). I don’t know if I buy it, but it’s an interesting story.
Pretty much what I meant though was that a QWERTY keyboard is a standard and it makes sense to use it when real typing is involved, but that advantage goes away when you have to navigate between the letters with a remote control.
Jbarr:
Yeah, the wrap around makes it pretty quickly. When demoing ReplayTV at tradeshows, we look for easy to type actor names and keywords. Alda is a favorite of ReplayMike. I used “high†a lot when testing the behavior of the interface.
Doug
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-JustDoug
That’s cool. I’ve read various stories about how the layout came to be. I read something that said that when the typewriter was first introduced, all the letters to spell typewriter were put on the first line, making it easier for someone to demonstrate (and therefore sell). I don’t know if I buy it, but it’s an interesting story.
Pretty much what I meant though was that a QWERTY keyboard is a standard and it makes sense to use it when real typing is involved, but that advantage goes away when you have to navigate between the letters with a remote control.
Jbarr:
Yeah, the wrap around makes it pretty quickly. When demoing ReplayTV at tradeshows, we look for easy to type actor names and keywords. Alda is a favorite of ReplayMike. I used “high†a lot when testing the behavior of the interface.
Doug
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-JustDoug
The whole story is here http://home.earthlink.net/~dcrehr/whyqwert.html
Actually, I just found an interesting article, showing the explanation of riker's to be a common myth:
The myth goes roughly as follows. The QWERTY design (patented by Christopher Sholes in 1868 and sold to Remington in 1873) aimed to solve a mechanical problem of early typewriters. When certain combinations of keys were struck quickly, the type bars often jammed. To avoid this, the QWERTY layout put the keys most likely to be hit in rapid succession on opposite sides. This made the keyboard slow, the story goes, but that was the idea. A different layout, which had been patented by August Dvorak in 1936, was shown to be much faster. Yet the Dvorak layout has never been widely adopted, even though (with electric typewriters and then PCs) the anti-jamming rationale for QWERTY has been defunct for years.
Why has the bad design endured? Because, the story continues, that first inefficient standard became locked in. Even though the costs of new keyboards and retraining for the Dvorak layout would be quickly recovered, typists won't switch unless others do so as well; likewise, the keyboard manufacturers refuse to move first. There is a co-ordination failure-that is, a market failure.
Carriage return
A fine tale, but largely fiction. The paper by Messrs Liebowitz and Margolis shows, in the first place, that the first evidence supporting claims of Dvorak's superiority was extremely thin. The main study was carried out by the United States Navy in 1944 (doubtless a time when every second counted in the typing pools). The speed of 14 typists retrained on Dvorak was compared with the speed of 18 given supplementary training on QWERTY. The Dvorak typists did better-but it is impossible to say from the official report whether the experiment was properly controlled. There are a variety of oddities and possible biases: all of them, it so happens, seeming to favour Dvorak.
But then it turns out-something else the report forgot to mention-that the experiments were conducted by one Lieutenant-Commander August Dvorak, the navy's top time-and-motion man, and owner of the Dvorak layout patent.
In 1956 a carefully designed study by the General Services Administration found that QWERTY typists were about as fast as Dvorak typists, or faster. Interest in Dvorak among companies and government agencies had lately been increasing, but it came to an end with that finding. Since then, as ``The Fable of the Keys'' explains, there have been a variety of other experiments and studies. They find that neither design of keyboard has a clear advantage over the other. Ergonomists point out that QWERTY's bad points (such as unbalanced loads on left and right hand; excess loading on the top row) are outweighed by presumably accidental benefits (notably, that alternating hand sequences make for speedier typing).
Which is all very interesting, but the point is this: if you have learned to type on a QWERTY keyboard, the cost of retraining for Dvorak (however modest) is not worth paying. This implies, in turn, that the QWERTY standard is efficient. There is no market failure.
Undaunted by the resilience of the QWERTY myth, Messrs Liebowitz and Margolis devote the first chapter of a forthcoming book on supposed market failures, technology and Microsoft to the fable of the keys. They go on to argue that the fashion for finding new kinds of market failure (lock in, path dependence, network effects, and so on) in high-tech industries is misconceived: QWERTY is just one example among many. Their views on this larger question are for another article. For now, merely note that the failure illustrated by the QWERTY myth has more to do with the study of economics than with markets. For some reason, economists seem to adopt bogus anecdotal histories and then get locked in.
The myth goes roughly as follows. The QWERTY design (patented by Christopher Sholes in 1868 and sold to Remington in 1873) aimed to solve a mechanical problem of early typewriters. When certain combinations of keys were struck quickly, the type bars often jammed. To avoid this, the QWERTY layout put the keys most likely to be hit in rapid succession on opposite sides. This made the keyboard slow, the story goes, but that was the idea. A different layout, which had been patented by August Dvorak in 1936, was shown to be much faster. Yet the Dvorak layout has never been widely adopted, even though (with electric typewriters and then PCs) the anti-jamming rationale for QWERTY has been defunct for years.
Why has the bad design endured? Because, the story continues, that first inefficient standard became locked in. Even though the costs of new keyboards and retraining for the Dvorak layout would be quickly recovered, typists won't switch unless others do so as well; likewise, the keyboard manufacturers refuse to move first. There is a co-ordination failure-that is, a market failure.
Carriage return
A fine tale, but largely fiction. The paper by Messrs Liebowitz and Margolis shows, in the first place, that the first evidence supporting claims of Dvorak's superiority was extremely thin. The main study was carried out by the United States Navy in 1944 (doubtless a time when every second counted in the typing pools). The speed of 14 typists retrained on Dvorak was compared with the speed of 18 given supplementary training on QWERTY. The Dvorak typists did better-but it is impossible to say from the official report whether the experiment was properly controlled. There are a variety of oddities and possible biases: all of them, it so happens, seeming to favour Dvorak.
But then it turns out-something else the report forgot to mention-that the experiments were conducted by one Lieutenant-Commander August Dvorak, the navy's top time-and-motion man, and owner of the Dvorak layout patent.
In 1956 a carefully designed study by the General Services Administration found that QWERTY typists were about as fast as Dvorak typists, or faster. Interest in Dvorak among companies and government agencies had lately been increasing, but it came to an end with that finding. Since then, as ``The Fable of the Keys'' explains, there have been a variety of other experiments and studies. They find that neither design of keyboard has a clear advantage over the other. Ergonomists point out that QWERTY's bad points (such as unbalanced loads on left and right hand; excess loading on the top row) are outweighed by presumably accidental benefits (notably, that alternating hand sequences make for speedier typing).
Which is all very interesting, but the point is this: if you have learned to type on a QWERTY keyboard, the cost of retraining for Dvorak (however modest) is not worth paying. This implies, in turn, that the QWERTY standard is efficient. There is no market failure.
Undaunted by the resilience of the QWERTY myth, Messrs Liebowitz and Margolis devote the first chapter of a forthcoming book on supposed market failures, technology and Microsoft to the fable of the keys. They go on to argue that the fashion for finding new kinds of market failure (lock in, path dependence, network effects, and so on) in high-tech industries is misconceived: QWERTY is just one example among many. Their views on this larger question are for another article. For now, merely note that the failure illustrated by the QWERTY myth has more to do with the study of economics than with markets. For some reason, economists seem to adopt bogus anecdotal histories and then get locked in.
What are you talking about? You just said EXACTLY what I said, yet you say what I said was a myth???? You don't disagree with my explanation of how the qwerty keyboard came about, which was the majority of the post, and all I said about the dvorak was that it was a better HAND layout, I didn't say a THING about it being faster. Since all the primary keys are on the same line, it's more comfortable for the hands, but not necessarily faster. I never said it was. And I said there were many other non-qwerty layouts also developed, and writers like jms use them. That is absolutely true. He just gave away the one he used to write B5 to a lucky purchaser of one of his books.
The page that YOU posted a link to says what you claim to be a myth. Not what I said. Watch who you call a myth http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/smile.gif
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-=- Glenn -=-
The page that YOU posted a link to says what you claim to be a myth. Not what I said. Watch who you call a myth http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/smile.gif
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-=- Glenn -=-
Another little-known fact: Smith-Corona used the patented layout, but other typewriter manufacturers would each use their own layout to avoid patent royalties. Since Smith-Corona sold the most typewriters and were "the standard" in business typewriters at the time, when the 17-year-long patent ran out, everyone switched to the QWERTY layout.
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PRMan
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PRMan
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But you said RIKER'S EXPLANATION IS A MYTH. *MY* explanation was NOT a myth, as I said nothing about it being any faster or better. YOUR linked article claimed that, not my post, so like I said, watch what you call a myth.
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-=- Glenn -=-
| Originally posted by RandyL712: Hey pal, the MYTH I wrote of is a direct quote from the ENCYCLOPEDIA, the article called "The QWERTY Myth" . It's nothing personal, buddy. |
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-=- Glenn -=-
Has anyone actually tried using the Dvorak keyboard layout? I do. It took me about three to four weeks to get completely used to it (though to this day I still sometimes hit the button marked "C" when I want to type a"J." The "C" on Dvorak is located where the "I" is on the Qwerty layout).
I think it is a little faster, especially because I seem to make fewer typos. All I know is it does seem easier. The vowels are all on the left (including "Y") and the most common consonants on the right. Someday, everything will be voice activated, and we won't have to worry about this at all. ;-) For those who don't know, this is what Dvorak standard looks like, starting with the "Q" in qwerty:
',.pyfgcrl/=\\
aoeuidhtns-
;qjkxbmwvz
There is also a Dvorak layout for people who can only use their left hand and one for people who can only use their right hand.
I think it is a little faster, especially because I seem to make fewer typos. All I know is it does seem easier. The vowels are all on the left (including "Y") and the most common consonants on the right. Someday, everything will be voice activated, and we won't have to worry about this at all. ;-) For those who don't know, this is what Dvorak standard looks like, starting with the "Q" in qwerty:
',.pyfgcrl/=\\
aoeuidhtns-
;qjkxbmwvz
There is also a Dvorak layout for people who can only use their left hand and one for people who can only use their right hand.
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