[Panel-devel] The Plasma Keyboard

[Malcolm Dean]

Congratulations on a very exciting project which could potentially save 
desktop Linux from being sucked under the coming MacTel waves!

Here's a design challenge from the days BEFORE the PC. Yes, Virginia, 
there were some very productive environments and applications, even 
before GUIs, which had many of the same capabilities as GUIs. The 
leading products took advantage of the fact that humans have ten fingers 
and a great deal of neural tissue devoted to both commanding and 
receiving input from them.

Once GUIs arrived, keyboards were ignored, users started getting carpal 
tunnel, and some idiots decided to move the Control and Function keys to 
places where they take far too much effort to use. Today, our keyboards 
are designed and manufactured in countries where the alphabet is a 
foreign concept and speed typing in the native script is not even a 
possibility.

There's a screenplay editor called ScriptWare. It was written for DOS 
but now runs on Mac and Windoze. Although it has the normal menu bar at 
the top, you can do almost everything you need to with TWO KEYS - TAB 
and ENTER - just like a typewriter. (Oh... it was a mechanical gizmo we 
used to use before microprocessors came along. Very productive.)

Now if OS X menus typically have only one toolbar and seven actions 
visible at a time ( http://www.icefox.net/articles/kdeosx.php ), surely 
such simplicity could be reflected in the keyboard?

Here's the challenge:

Can you design PLASMA so that it is KEYBOARD-PRODUCTIVE, almost 
eliminating the need for a mouse (except for graphics applications)? Can 
you make this new interface so obvious and simple that, most of the 
time, the user's hands don't need to move from the Home Row of the 
keyboard? And can you therefore make PLASMA the most useful, fastest 
interface ever invented?

Just a thought...


Malcolm Dean
Los Angeles
malcolmdean-at-runbox.com