What Are the Different Types of Digital Keyboards?

A keyboard layout is a diagram or definition of how the keys are distributed on the keyboard. The keyboard layout people use is determined by software in the computer. The characters on the keys indicate the standard layout of the keyboard. Many different keyboard layouts are used worldwide. The layout people usually use depends on their country or language.

Keyboard layout

The origin of the keyboard layout

When we refer to the word "computer", most of our brains form a conceptual impression: a monitor, a chassis, a keyboard, and a long mouse. As one of the standard equipment for computer text input, the keyboard has gone through decades of development along with the development of computers. However, this widely used keyboard sorting into "QWERTY" keyboards is decades away.

As early as the early 18th century, people began to develop typewriters in order to obtain clearer text and faster writing speed. The earliest typewriter patent that can be verified at present was applied by Henry Mill, an Englishman in 1714, when his typewriter could only type capital letters. It wasn't until the middle and late 19th century that typewriters became popular. It was during that time that various typewriters began to flood the market.

There is a huge difference between the keyboard input method and our traditional manual input method. When learning to use a typewriter, people need to pay a certain amount of effort and time to memorize the key layout, thereby improving the typing speed. This is also called " Learning costs. " For a typewriter, the more familiar you are with a certain key layout, the higher the conversion cost for switching to other different key layouts. For simple keyboards, it may not be obvious. For example, the order of numbers of mobile phone keyboards and computer numeric keypads is upside down, but few people feel uncomfortable because of this arrangement. But for a complex typewriter keyboard with twenty-six letters and nearly ten symbols, this conversion cost can become considerable.

In this way, in order to reduce the cost of switching between different key layouts for typewriter users as much as possible, it is nothing more than two ways: standardizing the key arrangement of typewriters; or producing typewriters that can change the keyboard arrangement order at will. Relatively speaking, the latter may be easier.

Random choice of keyboard layout Macquarie

In 1868, American typewriter Christopher Latham Sholes obtained a patent for a typewriter model and obtained the right to operate. A few years later, he designed a keyboard layout that is universal today, the "QWERTY" keyboard. The basic principle of this keyboard is to drive a long rod through the keys, with a hammer on the long rod. The hammer is struck on the paper with colored ribbons, leaving dark letters printed on it, like a cover on paper. Chapter is the same.

At the beginning, Shoals installed the order of the alphabetical keys of the keyboard in alphabetical order, that is, the alphabetical order of the upper left corner of the keyboard was "ABCDEF". However, he soon discovered that when the typist typed a bit faster, the long rod and hammer of two adjacent letters might get stuck together, which caused a "click" failure. It is said that to solve this problem, Shoals went to ask his brother-in-law, a mathematician and school teacher, to help. The digitist suggested that he separate the most commonly used letters of the English alphabet on the keyboard to avoid malfunctions. Shoals was happy to adopt his brother-in-law's solution, arranging the letters in a random manner, and finally formed a "QWERTY" layout. Shoals told the public that the alphabetical order on the keyboards of typewriters is the most scientific and speeds up typing.

However, authoritative sources in the history of British typewriters now consider this to be "one of the largest deceptions in history." Wilfred A. Beecher, curator of the British Typewriter Museum and author of "Typewriter Century" claims that "this so-called" scientific arrangement "to reduce the distance of finger movement is a complete lie." "Yes Any random arrangement of letters will be more reasonable than the current arrangement. "

In 1873, Remington acquired the patent and began commercial production of typewriters. Due to the economic downturn in the 1870s, the timing of this $ 125 office equipment market was not good. When Remington introduced the improved Type II of this typewriter in 1878, the company was on the verge of bankruptcy. Therefore, although sales began to rise slowly, and the annual output of typewriters rose to 1,200 in 1881, the typewriters of the "QWERTY" layout had far from gaining a solid market position in their early development. During the 10 years of the 1880s, the total number of "QWERTY" layout typewriters in the United States did not exceed 5,000, including some "QWERTY" layout typewriters that were converted by changing the hammer. The typewriter invented by Lucien Stephen Crandall in 1879 placed the hammer on a cylindrical sleeve, thereby completely avoiding the problem of keying. Later, the Blickensderfer typewriter appeared more careful in the arrangement of the keyboard. The "Ideal" keyboard they introduced put the letters that make up 70% of English words in the "D0HIATENSOR" order on the reference line of the typewriter (the middle line of the three-letter keys). ).

In the 1880s, the typewriter market began to flourish, and many keyboards competed with QWERTY keyboards. However, just when the technical principle advantage of the "QWERTY" layout was to be replaced by advances in typewriter engineering, the American typewriter industry quickly fell to the "QWERTY" layout, making it a "universal keyboard" for typewriters. In this process, the event considered to be key was a typing contest held in Cincinnati, the United States on July 25, 1888. In the competition, a court stenographer Frank McGurrin from Salt Lake City used the "QWERTY" layout typewriter and blind typing method to win the championship with an absolute advantage and a $ 500 bonus. Macquarie was clearly the first person to memorize this keyboard and type it blindly. This incident established a more technologically advanced view of Remington typewriters. McGuire's choice of a Remington typewriter may be arbitrary, but it has contributed to the establishment of this standard.

The contingency of history thus determines the layout of the keyboard. The keyboard layout of the typewriter was inherited from the computer keyboard and became the standard keyboard layout that we still use today.

DSK Advantages of keyboard layout DSK

In 1936, in order to enable right and left hands to strike more words alternately, August Dvorak invented a new keyboard layout, namely "Devrak Simplified Keyboard", and applied for a patent. He claims that this key layout can shorten training cycles and greatly improve typing speed. There are three principles of DSK layout: try to hit with your left and right hands alternately to avoid one-handed combo; the least pressing key moves the least distance; the most commonly used letter is the position of the guide key (the key placed by the index fingers of both hands). A subsequent experiment conducted by the U.S. Navy during World War II confirmed that "the cost of retraining a group of typists will be offset by the increased efficiency of DSK's full-time work over the next ten days." Despite these advantages, however, Until Dvorak's death in 1975, the DSK keyboard was not accepted by the market. Although not long after, Apple's Type II computer shifted from "QWERTY" layout to DSK, and persuaded people to give up QWERTY keyboards through commercials, but this approach obviously did not produce results.

For DSK, there are also some doubting voices. Economists SJ Liebowitz and Stephen E. Margolis believe that the evidence supporting DSK's better arguments is not only small, but mainly speculation. At present, there are two key arguments supporting DSK's superiority. One is Dvorak's own opinion, and the other is an experiment by the Navy Department. Dvorak's opinion comes from an experiment he conducted with several collaborators: he compared his collaborators with the typing speed obtained in four different and completely independent experiments. One experiment measures the typing speed of DSK, and three tests the typing speed of "QWERTY" layout keyboards. Experimenters claim that these studies prove that students learn DSK faster than "QWERTY" layout keyboards. However, Liebowitz and Magalis believe that the samples used in these experiments are too different (participants in the four experiments were students of different ages and abilities) and did not specify the sample selection method (random samples or all students). Moreover, since one of the hosts of the experiment was the inventor of the Dvorak keyboard, the reliability of the experimental results was very low.

In this way, the admiralty experiment that David mentioned is critical to the argument that DSK is superior. Naval research concluded that using DSK to train typists is much more effective than using "QWERTY" layout keyboards. However, Lieberitz and Magalis point out that there are many problems with the design of this experiment. For example, are these results aimed at typists with normal skills, or are typists below normal? To what extent did the Navy's research underestimate the value of the increased QWERTY retraining due to inconsistent metrics? Did the two experimental teams get the same training? and many more. They think that the experimental research of the Navy Department may be biased because almost all aspects of the experiment are in favor of Dvorak. Dvorak was the chief expert in naval analysis of time and movement research during World War II. The naval experiments in 1944 and some experiments by the Treasury in 1946 were conducted under his guidance. At the same time, Dvorak holds a DSK patent and received $ 130,000 from the Carnegie Board of Education for conducting these studies.

Some domestic supporters of DSK claim that DSK has advantages not only in inputting English, but also in inputting Chinese, DSK also has advantages over "QWERTY" layout keyboards. If you want to try DSK, support for it is already built into the Windows operating system. For Windows XP users, you can open "Control Panel Keyboard", enter the "Input Method Locale" tab, and then click the "Add" button to set the "Input Method Locale" to "English (United States)", And find "American English-DVORAK" in the "Keyboard Layout / Input Method" column. After confirming, you can switch between two different key layouts.

In addition, Lillian Malt invented the MALT keyboard under his own name, allowing the thumb to be used more than just hitting the "Space" key. This keyboard makes the Backspace and other keys farther away from the center of the keyboard easier to reach. But this keyboard, like DSK, has not been widely used.

Whether it is a "QWERTY" layout keyboard or DSK, the order of the key positions has been modified without involving other aspects. For example, no matter what kind of keyboard is mentioned above, when you press any letter or number key, the force used is basically the same, and most of the keyboards remain flat, and there is no significant in three-dimensional structure. improvement of.

However, with the widespread use of computers, keyboard usage has begun to increase rapidly. At this stage, the number of keystrokes, reliability, and comfort of the keyboard has gradually become the focus of research and development by manufacturers.