Unfortunately, while electronics have gotten smaller, our fingers have
not kept pace. The limit on keyboard key size is largely dictated by
finger size, which will constrain keyboard size so long as we insist on
sticking to qwerty keyboards (which were specifically designed to limit
the data rate to the capabilities of early typewriter mechanisms).
There are a number of different types of keyboards that have been
designed to improve speed, but only the chorded designs will allow you
to reduce the number of keys and thus the size of the keyboard.
Note that I am talking about full ten finger input - devices with
chicklet keyboards (i.e., telephones, some PDAs) are very small, but
they are not designed for more than one or two finger/thumb input.
On Tuesday, May 6, 2003, at 10:49 AM, dc wrote:
> i would guess the lights will be hidden in a housing at the end of a
> PDA
> within one generation but keyboards seem to have stayed the same size
> for a
> while.
>
Received on Wed May 7 21:32:21 2003