Saturday - October 28, 2006
Better Letters
Thanks to cell phones, many of us are
unfortunately forced to type English using an 8 character pad (remember that 1
and 0 have no letters on them, but most phones use these for punctuation). Each
key represents 3 or 4 letters plus a number and you can choose between them by
repeatedly pressing the key. Pressing a different key automatically moves the
cursor and starts the process of choosing the next letter or, if your next
letter is on the same key, after a short delay the cursor moves so you can
continue typing from any key. The trouble is that these letters are arranged
alphabetically and you end up with too many letters that must be typed on the
same key in sequence (introducing a forced delay). Since the only time this
delay should occur is when you want to type the same letter twice, an ideal
arrangement would put letters together on a key that occur least
frequently in sequence (there's PostScript at the other end of that
link). The trouble is that, unlike alphabetical, QWERTY, or even Dvorak, such
an arrangement would require training to use, making its adoption unlikely, but
even if it were just an option, if not the default, it could provide a better
data entry method for cell phones.