Re: [9fans] The utility of a chording pad

["Eric Van Hensbergen" <ericvh@gmail.com>]

On 8/4/07, john@csplan9.rit.edu <john@csplan9.rit.edu> wrote:
> So I've spent a lot of time today watching recordings of Engelbart's
> 1968 demonstration (http://sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/1968Demo.html),
> and I really like the chording pad he has over on the left of his keyboard.
> It's the same type of thing that shows up again in the Xerox Alto.
> I'm just wondering, as Plan 9 users and developers, what would you do
> with such a thing in the environment? Engelbart's device apparently
> let you input 31 different chords, which I'd say isn't sufficient to replace
> a keyboard but is still pretty impressive; with such a thing, would you perhaps
> bind the chords to perform acme commands, for instance? We've already
> got mouse chording, and it's pretty slick; add some more chording in,
> say hit the first two keys in order to delete the current frame in acme.
> Of course, if we were to get a chord pad that could produce enough
> combinations for all alphanumeric characters, it could be used to replace
> the keyboard.
>
> I'd just like to get some opinions, see what you think of chording devices
> and what potential utility they could have in Plan 9.
>
I always thought it'd be cool to hack up something for
http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=157024
to do left handed chording and keep the right hand on the mouse.

I bought one and played around a bit, but was unsatisfied with my
ability to actually detect chords without writing a proper driver
IIRC.

I experimented a bunch with different chording setups a decade ago and
found most unsatisfactory, but half-keyboard chordic setups seem to be
quite easy to pick up - the problem with the Nostromo was that it was
like 2 keys short of being a proper half keyboard so you needed more
than one meta-key ... which was offputting.   Plus no numbers made it
kinda hard to code with.

       -eric