QWERTY Keyboards on a touch screen are still the stupid!

sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al to Showerthoughts@lemmy.world – -44 points –

Whether you, like me, beleive that QAZWSX keyboards make far more sense, especially in a machine learning world, I think we all agree a layout designed to circumvent jamming typewriter keys doesn't make sense in modern society on modern devices.

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!unpopularopinion@lemmy.world is that way

😂

Why was this downvoted? I wasn't aware that shower thoughts had to be popular opinions.

They don't, but pushing your preferred software also isn't a shower thought.

I didn't know keyboard layouts were considered software. My bad!

It's all good man, it's just an internet forum.

It makes perfect sense, we've been using it forever, it's the standard, almost every person that's taken a typing class for the last 150ish years (in the English speaking world), has done so on a qwerty keyboard. Why bother changing something that just works?

Just because you're used to something, doesn't make it good.

What evidence do you have that QWERTY is bad?

Honestly, it's a mere shower thought, so I didn't come prepared with notes and statistics in hand, what I will say is the amount of screen real estate is by far the worst issue.

Use something else, try coming back.

  • this post is sponsored by colemak gang

Sure, and we've tried a lot of alternative layouts over the decades.

None of them stuck around, by and large. Some have ultra-niche followings, sure. But overall, the latin-script world has stuck to (Q|A)WERT(Y|Z). For a reason!

True. But the rule of thumb is that in order to replace an existing working solution, a new model needs to be at least ten times better in quantifiable ways. Otherwise it's worth staying with the established solution.

What's ten times better than qwerty?

Have you ever tried to type on your phone in landscape while still seeing the content? That's 8 times better in itself.

"Have you ever tried to do this thing you'll never actually need to do?"

It sounds a hell of a lot more like you're trying to automate text communication

Wait, you've never had to type on your phone in landscape? Never played a game and had to type a message in chat? Never had to type while watching a video? Never had to do something in terminal and the text wasn't legible in portrait? 🥹

  1. no, 2) qwerty is fine for that, literally 0 need for AI interpretation, 3) no, not that I can't just switch to a pc keyboard for 4) no

Because touch screens are very different from typewriters and having to precisely press tiny keys without making full use of their capabilities is extremely inefficient.

I have enough difficulty when a UI decides to use abc layout, no way would I want to learn a new keyboard layout. QWERTY it good enough

The beauty of QAZWSX, or a modern machine learning backed fuzzy typing layout is that you don't have to learn it. You roughly press where you would ordinarily and the "AI" does the rest and figures out what you were trying to say.

I'd rather not invite AI into my life.

That's an unrealistic expectation to set upon yourself. Machine learning has been prevalent in our lives for a long time already. But as long as you're happy, that's all that matters.

Why does this not work with a QWERTY layout?

Because reasons ok!?! Just trust me bro.

You're being incredibly toxic for a shower thought. Have a word with yourself.

I had a word with myself, I said I don't like my attitude but unfortunately I can't get rid of me because no one wants to work these days. I had to settle for giving myself a slap on the wrist which won't change anything.

It does. But it doesn't need to. Besides, utilizing such algorithms in a QWERTY keyboard produces needless complexity to the algorithm, putting additional load on the processor

I could kind of see where you were coming from before but... yeah now you've lost me.

I'm not completely against AI, but I wouldn't want it having control over every aspect of my life just yet. Besides, if you type where you usually would, what's the point of changing the layout in the first place? Regular keyboards work just fine for me and most people, I don't see a reason to reinvent the wheel with some forced AI schtick.

I put AI in quotations because it really isn't an artificial intelligence, it's just machine learning.

Okay, so put it like this, let's say you split a keyboard in two vertically and then rather than have 13 keys on each side, you have one. But your brain still sees the thirteen keys, when you type, based on a local language model, the keyboard would say, this list of words is most often used after this word. However based on an input on the left side X times and Y times on the right, the word is around a certain length and has a likelihood of these letters being used and then it replaces your gibberish with the word you were trying to type. Obviously with machine learning it gets better over time.

We walk with these mini computers, why wouldn't we use them to process communication?

But what happens when it's inevitably wrong? How do you type the word you actually meant to type?

You would get a selection of words, like autocorrect now. But if none of those were correct, you could fall back to legacy mode to put in the correct word and next time that word would be weighted so you're more likely to see it.

I mean, I see how this could kind of work... but I still think most people would want to use a regular keyboard. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems needlessly complicated, especially since most people use and are fine with the system we have now.

I think that if you had a new keyboard enabled on every new phone, people would adapt. Unfortunately though, that would never happen.

But if you do see a normal keyboard and can type each letter isn't that the same as what autocorrect is doing now? If I type "spmrthjng" my keyboard already autocorrects to "something". If you only see the keyboard after it's guessed wrong then that would just be autocorrect with more steps.

You mean like the way sweeping swiping figures out the words? And what do you do when trying to type out a password? Does it revert to a normal keyboard or function like T9 keyboard with multiple presses to select the right character?

I think with the advent of passkeys, this issue is largely mitigated. But for the most part, yes, reversion to the familiar makes sense, whether that's QWERTY, T9 or simply disabling auto correct.

QWERTY Keyboards on a touch screen are still the stupid!

I know what you are trying to say but the more times I read your post title, the more I feel like I'm having a stroke.

a layout designed to circumvent jamming typewriter

Or are you have... the stroke?!

Now I'm having another one. I heard if I keep stroking I might go blind (ノ゜ー゜)ノ

a layout designed to circumvent jamming typewriter keys

BTW, the supposed origin of the QWERTY layout is uncertain, and the story about it being based around avoiding adjacent bigrams has been called into question often enough (PDF, see pg. 169ff). You can see there plenty images of typewriters that had O next to U still (I was left of U), which if you think about bigrams makes no sense as especially back then it was one of by far the most common ones.
The supposed slowdown is also false as explained in the PDF, as early typewriters were used to receive morse-code, and could type at 60-80 words per minute while the best morse senders capped at ~30, meaning that no slowdown would have been perceivable anyways.

One proposed origin could be that the early still-not-quite-there developments were based on most people using 4-8 fingers to type not all 10, and alwys the inner fingers and discarding the outer ones.

I seem to see a story I believed for years get debunked almost weekly now, thanks

It's the layout I know by heart so switching to anything else would just be worse. No thank you.

I imagine the Amish community say the same thing about horses.

And it seems to work out quite well for them.

But for the rest of society, cars are invaluable.

Meh, I've been getting on fine without one for almost 4 decades.

You cycling or using public transport?

Mosty public transport.

That's honestly the optimal way to travel. The world needs to make public transport the primary mode of transport everywhere.

Hey OP, could you send some links about QAZWSX? I coulndt find anything

Same here, especially something with AI?

I'm currenly using Unexpected Keyboard with dvorak layout which works insanely well (especially for Termux and such)

I just offered to private message someone an implementation because I didn't want to be accused of shilling but since you and @happyredditrefugee@lemm.ee are both interested and it would look dodgy to be offering so many private messages, I'll just post here is that's okay?

everywhere I use 10 fingers to type, I use dvorak; but I still use qwerty on my phone.

I tried dvorak on my phone keyboard, but my thumbs kept bumping into each other. It was too annoying so I switched back.

Exactly the same here. Since I swipe type, I have to imagine that would be a nightmare on Dvorak with all the vowels clustered together.

I've never seriously tried dvorak. How long did it take you to get proficient?

I actively practiced with whatever tool gnome had built-in at the time, it’s called klavaro or something. It’s a very simple practicing app.

It took about two weeks for me to get familiar enough to be able to work in it without having to switch back sometimes.

The trick is just like with learning a new language: don’t switch back unless you absolutely have to, not when it would be convenient/faster.

Within a month or two you’ll be typing Dvorak like you’ve never even heard of qwerty.

Some things to note:

At the time I learned dvorak I was not fully typing qwerty with ten fingers, so ymmv.

I’m actually using programmer’s Dvorak; the difference is in the placement of the non-letter characters.

I don’t necessarily recommend it over regular Dvorak; if you find yourself regularly using other people’s machines, I’d probably recommend against it. Every major OS has Dvorak built-in, but not programmer Dvorak.

I wanna try so badly now!

I’m not stopping you, lol.

Just try to do a few training exercises every day, those really helped me.

And as a bonus, you already know 2 letters! The A and M are the same as on qwerty. And if the other letters on the keyboard distract you, you can always tape over them.

Good luck, I believe in you!

I’m not stopping you, lol

I would argue that what you're doing is far worse, you're tempting me! 😭

What is a QAZWSX keyboard (couldn't figure it out by web search), and what does keyboard layout have to do with machine learning? I'm genuinely curious.

Just an alternative keyboard layout

I broke the concept down in more detail here https://lazysoci.al/comment/9715945

Thanks for replying. It sounds like you basically get two (or some number well below one keys per character) keys and the set of possible characters gets somehow distributed between the two "real" keys, then the keyboard uses a predictive algorithm based on previous input to guess which keys were meant to be pressed.

IMO I'd be willing to try out an implementation of such an idea so long as I could run the predictive algorithm locally on my phone. I do think that current autocorrect + predicting which keys were pressed would require a lot more training data than just a generic autocorrect to get it working sensibly, and I think it would take a lot longer to converge to the user's "style" if it ever does.

I absolutely think it has to be a local implementation. Especially with all these new processors with their AI benefits. Qualcomm T2000 with built in Skynet. I'm taking the piss, but the latest chip announcement was similar.

Qwerty is bad for physical keyboards, but it's actually pretty good for mobile especially for swipe typing. I use coleman-dh on an ergo split keyboard but i still use qwerty on my phone because it just works better.

We live in a world whereby we're lucky enough to have options.

What I found when I first learned about DVORAK and other layouts and why we use QWERTY, there were some studies that had shown that there wouldn't really be any significant increase in proficiency using different layouts, and the time needed to readjust to a new layout just isn't worth it.

I switched to Colemak because of RSI, the reduction in finger strain was worth it for me.

Thanks for this post. I have a friend with baby wrist and maybe Colemak will make her return to work easier.

I use Dvorak, but it has nothing to do with statistics for me. When I switched to Dvorak, it felt more comfortable on my hands. My typing speed is essentially the exact same, for example, and I don't think you could find a measurable difference depending on which I use. But qualitatively -- it feels more comfortable.

I'll like to see more info of this "QAZWSX" keyboard layout if you have any. I did a quick search for it but ended up in Reddit with a comment you made (I think?. The usernames were almost identical). I don't like the AI part on a keyboard though.

Do you mind if I send you a link as a private message? This was honestly just me thinking aloud this morning and I really don't want to be accused of shilling.

there was also the video detailing how the layout actually formed from a morse code machine with individual letter keys and putting commonly used and similar in morse code letters together, and spelling typewriter with the top letter row was a coincidence. Much like every other theory I didn't bother delving too deeply and verifying it myself.

I have never heard of qazwsx but I do agree that there isn't much value in qwerty any more though for me its not only touch that benefits from change

There is plenty of evidence qwerty is slower there are also plenty of alternatives that get minimal to no use cos well standards.