back to article Boffins KALQ-u-late the ultimate 'board for two-thumb tablet tappers

Boffins in Scotland, Germany and the US of A have calculated what they claim is the most efficient two-thumb keyboard it’s possible to put on a tablet, at least for folk writing in English on a 7-inch slate. Researchers at the University of St Andrews, the Max Planck Institute for Informatics and Montana Tech crunched the …

COMMENTS

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    TOGTO on one thumb but only F on the other??

    Boffins... evidently not frequent users of 4chan.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      nor are they fans of bundles of sticks

  2. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Thumb Up

    Nealy double the texting rate with this layout over others.

    Is that not somewhat impressive?

    Get's my thumb up.

  3. Senor Beavis
    Coat

    Latin pedantry

    If you're gonna use Latin, get it right - pollices is the plural of thumbs, as any fule kno. And yes, I'm also absolutely certain that nobody gives a f**k.

  4. cbf123

    Where's the punctuation?

    What about modifier keys, punctuation, numbers, etc.? There's a reason I use the hacker keyboard on my tablet...

  5. Camilla Smythe

    Snigger..

    “An error-correction algrithm was added to help address linguistic and motor errors."

    algorythumble...

  6. Ged T
    Coffee/keyboard

    Great, but it is a two-handed device?

    One salient point about QWERTY and similar keyboards is that they do not require the user to use both hands.

    It's great to see that HID usability is still being investigated, though.

    Mine's the one with the thumb prints all over it...

  7. JimmyPage Silver badge
    WTF?

    reinventing the wheel ?

    Whatever happened to that weird gizmo which was shown on Tomorrows World in the early 80s. It looked like a telephone handset, and you only needed 5 fingers to input data. It worked by combinations (2^5 gave 64 possibilities). It was aimed at people who were unaccustomed to typing (yes kids, in 1982 there was a subject called "typing" on the syllabus).

    When I started using computers (ITT 2020 !) I could managed 60+ wpm, which would have won awards in school, if I had been a girl.

    1. Ged T
      Coat

      Re: reinventing the wheel ?

      They got into trouble. They tried to send a request for help. In true, Tomorrow's World fashion, it failed to work when it was needed most but that didn't matter, though, because Tops of the Pops came on and they had Pan's People who'd did 'wiggly things' with their fingers and other body parts, too...

      I'm going....

  8. Zimmer
    Headmaster

    Oh, the irony

    ...... or should that be iorny.. ;)

    “An error-correction algrithm was added to help address linguistic and motor errors.

  9. Pat McGroin
    FAIL

    This is still stoopid....

    Why the heck are we even attempting to use keyboards on flat touch-screens? You'll never be able to touch-type, especially when the keys are under your big bulky thumbs.

    Definitely, using thumbs is best way to enter text on a tablet or phone: stable grip from both hands, thumbs are the fastest, most flexible digits, you can stand upright, so better for neck posture, etc.... but really, why bring back the RSI caused by the old nokia T9 keyboards?

    The best solution I've found for typing on tablet is the 'tactile keyboard' ... it uses simplified letterforms, thumbed onto the screen as small swiping gestures. It takes a bit of perseverance to get maximum benefit from it, but honestly, I never want to 'hunt and peck' at a stupid qwerty keyboard icon on a sheet of gorilla glass again!

    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nscrybe.android.tactilekeyboard

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