Monday, September 03, 2012

[rddlleca] Small keyboard

Four or eight buttons for thumb, potentially usable as direction (arrow) keys.  Remaining fingers on a 3 by 4 keyboard.  No chords, but sequences of keys, which seem to be easier to memorize into muscle memory.

Somewhat inspired by Frogpad, which only gives two buttons for the thumb, in contrast to Kinesis, which gives six.

Four thumb buttons probably square buttons in a diamond.  8 is either triangular buttons in an octagon, or kite shaped buttons in a star.  The mathematically elegant kite-shape minimizes the area enclosing an inscribed circle.  Realistically, measure the thumb contact area.

8 could also be a 3x3 grid of buttons, with the top middle button extended to the center space because it is the most awkward to hit.

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