We all share a common problem: our keyboards are wholly SH**

Posted by 22111
Oct 24, 2013 at 07:11 PM

From the text expander thread here, I had been so unhappy! Since in fact, a drop-down list is a shame! It will take so much time to “read” what it has to offer to you, and then, to “make up your mind”, and then, to select the “right” proposal. No way, I do NOT want to negate the utility of such drop-down lists: Whenever you don’t remember the right “shortcut”, they are pure gold indeed… IF they also present you the abbreviation you would have been expected to enter instead.

But text expanding is far from easy, at the time being. In former times, I had bought a “Preh” 128 keys additional keyboard; it goes without saying that such a purchase is devoid of sense since it will force you to bring your fingers at about 50 cm of your main keyboard: Such special keyboards might indeed be of great use in machine command environments and such, but certainly not to enter macros.

So I mused again about text expanding, and about AI in all this, and of course, I got lots of ideas for this; btw, translation tools (CAT, “aligner tools”) have been fulfilling similar tasks for some time now!:

http://www.translationzone.com/products/translation-software/

On this page, they differentiate “translation memory”, “terminology management”, and “machine translation”, and having browsed some translators’s sites, I know now just a little bit of the problems involved, and of the solutions developers present, and it goes without saying that there is BIG “interaction” between translators’ need and text expanding needs, the “market” being with translators, and hence, some ingenious solutions are there…

As said before, I work with two 1280x1024 screens (this setting is VERY bad for pdf reading…); you might work on a 1920x1280 screen or such (idem!).

So we all share the problem of switching back and forth between our outliner/PIM/IMS and “secondary” applications, and often, we trigger some command, without really knowing to which one of our two applications currently displayed our command is to be addressed, or more precisely, we know very well to which application we want to send the command, but then, by mistake, it’s send to the wrong one.

So now I was so fed up with my “working environment” that I bought a 35-key “Active Key” (it’s German, they are within the former “German Democratic Republic”) programmable keypad, and which I intend to “program” the way I formerly had tried to “program” my 128-key Preh keyboard.

In fact, we all work in our (respective) outline(s), and everything else, file manager, spreadsheet, “mind” thing, database, whatever, serves us to “bring data into our real work environment”, no?

Thus, I intend to assign about 20 or more commands of my outliner to my new “Active Key” keypad (all in the form “Alt-Shift-Control-character/digit”, which will then be intercepted by AHK in order to assign the respective “real” command to it), in its upper “half”: This way, I’ll FINALLY be able to trigger my “generic” outliner commands FROM EVERYWHER (by my left hand (I’m a right-hander) - why do ALL pc users assume that your right hand should leave the keyboard anytime, to reach and action the mouse, but when your left hand should always stay at QWERTZ (or AZERTY or whatever your keyboard imposes to you)?

Up to now (and after relegating my expensive Preh-128 to my cubpoard), I’ve had a Cherry 4700 (21 keys, programmable) on the left side of my keyboard, and I had my mouse at the right side, BUT THIS WASN’t SIMPLY ENOUGH!

I had a system variable for “num keyboard = digits vs. specific commands”, but all this simply never will be enough! I THINK in my outliner, and hits implies I have to reach its CORE commands, at least, FROM EVERYWHERE.

This way, I’ll put my Cherry 4700 to the right side of my keyboard, and, as said, on the left side of it, I’ll place my new AK-35, and of course, my mouse (Logitech Performance MX, enhanced by AHK).

So many times, I wanted to shift to the left/right tab in my outliner, or then, in my browser; so many times, I wanted to shift to the tree, or from the tree to the content pane, in my outliner, or then, between outliner and browser/secondary application, and vice versa: I’m so FED UP with having to CHECK first “where am I now?” - in the future, I’ll have SEPARATE, DEDICATED ARROW KEYS BOTH in my outliner and in any other, secondary application.

Also, you need digit keys, but then, your 1…0 range above your abc keyboard is too valuable to have your digits there, since for any macro you’ll need “when writing”, you’ll be in absolute need of such easily-pressed keys!

Thus, of course, you’ll need the “numeric keypad” of your keyboard… but do you really need it for digits? Would it not have been better to have really needed commands there, near your abc keys? And then, have an additional numeric keyboard, “shifted” a little bit to the right, if ever you need to enter digits? (And if you have to enter a LOT of digits, why not bring your keypad near your right hand, i.e. have it BENEATH your regular keyboard, beneath its regular numeric keypad?)

Yes, SCOPE is a very important factor in macroing, but then, if you have - as we have! - a 90-p.c.-of-our-time application, you should have a “I’m worth it” (authoring rights: L’Oréal and/or their ad agency) keypad from which you immediately access all of your “thoughts” - and of course, those additional keypads cannot be of use but when they are “hand-sized”, i.e. permit you to “feel” their respective key positions by positioning your hand “around” them: As your hand regularly “positions” itself “on” the regular keyboard, or “around” the mouse, you’ll nedd “constrained” additional keyboards, too, upon which your hand will “fee” and then “get” a “natural spatial” “default position” - no way here with 128-keys keyboards, or with “large” additional” keyboards”, i.e., e.g., 7 rows but 12 columns orr such (“Preh-84”) - additional keyboards must have rather few columns, and then, some rows!

That’s why I bought “Active Key”, and not Preh, again: In ancient times, Preh had a 5x7 keyboard, not not anymore: their “hand-filling” keyboard now is a 5x6 keyboard, i.e. 5 columns, 6 rows only, when in fact the 7th row is pure gold, since you’re able to “address” it, tactile-wise, but just 5 columns is perfect for “holding it in your hand”, i.e. “managing it with one hand” - of course, some (and only some) “1x2” keys are needed, for VERY often-pressed keys, and especially as “dividers of space”: they will serve you as “spatial beacons” within this sea of 35 keys.

Rant: In ancient times (before USB), Cherry had keyboards with two ranges of F keys: NOT bad at all! Even today, they have got ONE such keyboard, but then, where you’d expect the arrow keys, it has a what-do-you-call-that-sh**-again?: It’s unusable. And, and said, for 120 euro, Preh sells you a 5x6 “programmable” keypad, when “Active Key” sells you, for about 85 euro, a 5x7 keypad, and you’ll be SOOOO happy to have got these 5 additional keys! (And their keys are or the “50 million pressing” variety of best-available Cherry quality.)

And then, in your “secondary frame” (be it within a second screen, or to the right side of your wide screen), you’ll access SEVERAL applications! Which means, from within your outliner (to the left), or from within any “secondary” application, you’ll need to have INSTANT access to any of your OTHER “secondary” applications, in many cases. No problem if you have “some keys left for this task”: I’ve got a “primary” file manager: I’ve got a “1x2” key for THAT… AND I’ve got some other dedicated (regular, “1x1”) keys for my 4 or 5 or so additional file managers… and so on…

We do outlining because we want to optimize our information management; if we are not willing to FOCUS ON our outliner and its core functions, from everywhere, our optimization try will abort, by about 30 p.c.

This means, there are “item management” tasks you’ll do within your outliner: No problem, you’ll have SCOPE keys for those tasks. But then, your outliner will be of so much MORE help to your work if you can trigger some OTHER tasks within it, FROM ANYWHERE, and without checking “where am I, at this moment?!” - this IMMEDIATE ACCESS TO the innermost of YOUR THINK MACHINE will greatly enhance your thinking… AND save you lots of your time.

(Allow for a personal remark: There’s a distinction between Kühn/Zeoli/“Dr. Andus” blogs and my blogging here: it’s “remaining descriptive” vs. “trying to find, and then sharing something new”.)

P.S. Some old men here will share my experience: Original XT keyboards weren’t that bad: (Just) 10 F keys to the left, 2 columns, 5 rowns, those F keys were easily “available” whenever your left hand rested on your desk. Then, they introduced the 12 F keys above your keyboard: VERY well - but from wherever did those a**ho*** did get the idea then to eliminate the 10 left-hand F keys? How ocean-deep dumb must be some “decisioners” in our industry?! (Instead of adding a 3rd or 4th column to them…)