There
are ways to type one-handed, including a relatively new technique
that sounds crazier than it is. Half-QWERTY, a software product from
Toronto inventor Edgar Matias, lets you type all the letters and numbers
on a computer keyboard with one hand. You place your hand where it
would normally reside if you were a two-handed typist; that takes
care of half the keyboard. To type the keys on the other side, you
hold the spacebar and press the mirror-image key. To get a p,
press space + q; to get a j, press space + f.
Press and release the spacebar and you get a space character, as always;
hold it down and nothing happens, to prevent you from accidentally
inserting a whole line of spaces.
Unlike
many purported "solutions" to typing problems, Half-QWERTY
has actually been tested--at the University of Toronto Input Research
Group (with which Matias is affiliated). After about eight or nine
hours of practice, most test subjects were typing with one hand at
over 50 per cent of their two-handed typing speeds; one subject, after
20 hours of practice, sporadically hit 88 per cent of her two-handed
rate. Errors, however, were about twice as frequent as in two-handed
typing.
OK,
so they system works. Naturally, though, there are problems:
- The
prosaic name (Matias is trying to dream up something snappier).
- Half-QWERTY
is not entirely transparent. That is, the best products meant for
disabled users work just fine for nondisabled users too, and ideally
Half-QWERTY would be part of "system software" on every
computer and would be active all the time. Two-handed typists would
never notice it, while one-handers could just sit down and type
away. In practice, however, Half-QWERTY often transposes space characters
and an adjacent character in fast two-hand typing, making it a bit
of a nuisance. It's an easily solvable problem, though, and Matias
is already aware of it.
- The
system assumes you already know how to type, so a user who can't
touch-type might have a tougher time getting the hang of it.
- If
you're using your left hand, the task of typing the apostrophe,
the right square bracket, and other characters on the far right
of the keyboard is tricky since, on many computers, those keys don't
have mirror images on the left. This is an even bigger deal in Germany
and Scandinavia where punctuation and the letters of the alphabet
(Ä, A., AE, etc.) are on the right-hand side. (Half-QWERTY
presently has you reach over and type them directly, but Matias
will reconfigure that function to individual specifications.)
For
the two-handed majority, Half-QWERTY does have a noteworthy application:
Making "palmtop" computers like the Casio Boss practical
for more than dividing restaurant checks accurately and keeping track
of your lovers' phone numbers. A palmtop usually has a tiny joke-of-a-keyboard
that forces you to hunt and peck; using Half-QWERTY, though, a manufacturer
could install full-size keys in half a standard layout. You could
then type at higher speeds than you would ever attain through poking
out one letter at a time on a typical palmtop's munchkin keyboard.
(Matias is developing his own palmtop computer.)
JOE CLARK
©1993 The Village
Voice
April 6, 1993. Vol. XXXVIII No. 14. The Weekly Newspaper of New York.
