Charachorder looks like a modern attempt to produce something similar to the Datahand (availability was always limited, and the company has gone defunct by now): http://www.atpm.com/7.05/datahand.shtml

The biggest issue with these devices is the huge learning curve upfront. You need to invest a lot of time to get to a point where the productivity / speed claims get true.

I learned Dvorak many years ago, and I would never switch back to a more traditional layout, but I’m not sure I would recommend it to anybody in general.

There actually is a modern (almost) equivalent of the DataHand called the Azeron gamepad [1], and there are some DIY 3D printed DataHand replicas too [2][3].

If you want to type really fast (>200 WPM) and don't mind a VERY steep learning curve, then getting a $95 Georgi keyboard [4] and learning steno [5] is probably the way to go.

[1]: https://www.azeron.eu/

[2]: https://github.com/JesusFreke/lalboard

[3]: https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=41422.0

[4]: https://www.gboards.ca/product/georgi

[5]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpv-Qb-dB6g

> Type individual characters like a keyboard or press all the letters in a word simultaneously and CharaChorder's internal processor will automatically arrange them on your screen in real time. THIS ALLOWS USERS TO TYPE 5X FASTER THAN IS PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE ON ANY KEYBOARD

You typed "anagram" but it spit out "nag a ram". Hmm. There goes the "5x".

Isn't the latter basically just a projection keyboard?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projection_keyboard

So, futuristic from the 90s, was available already and flopped (because it is much more uncomfortable than actual keys).

Worse physical feedback than the terminal keyboard made of stones at HEU (Hacking at the End of the Universe) '93. Because there is no physical feedback at all. However, if that can somehow be emulated (like on an Apple Magic Trackpad), perhaps?

You could go for audio feedback at least? https://github.com/zevv/bucklespring

With the camera, doesn’t that open up the possibility for other gestures?

You could do more than just tap, for example.

Pinch and zoom, scroll up scroll down, Next page,…

You could also create chords with two hands.

Has been done already in the leap motion controller. Also done before with the microsoft kinect.

Neat for some purposes, but not new and did not catch on.

Charachorder looks cool, though very difficult to learn. I wish someone would make a similar device using strain gauge joysticks (AKA Thinkpad TrackPoint) instead of moving physical switches. You could type with nearly zero finger movement.

Except that people want some kind of textile feedback for what they type—which is why SelfieType likely would only be just a “cool technology”

Like the feedback of smartphones? Especially those prior to the very recent vibrate on touch

People want to type, and they want to do it quickly. Tactile feedback is nice... but most people do not engage in typing for the fun of it. The primary concerns for this are input reliability, ease & speed of setup, and learning curve.

You aren't using such a thing to replace your desktop keyboard. You're using it to replace your smartphone keyboard, and probably primarily for typing emails without having to carry things around

> most people do not engage in typing for the fun of it. The primary concerns for this are input reliability, ease & speed of setup, and learning curve.

Swipe-style input on phones seems more popular than keypresses, despite having lower input reliability, more difficult setup, and an inability to enter certain words.

It's faster than typing, though, as long as the word you want to enter is part of the swipe input method's dictionary.

Are you sure swipe-style is more popular? My anecdotal experience is that hardly anyone even knows swipe typing is possible until I show them. I mostly interact with people aged between 25 and 50. Perhaps swipe typing is more common among younger users?

After you show them, what do they end up using?

Usually it seems to be a “wow, that’s neat” quickly followed by forgetting about the feature.

Smartphones work to some extent because they are relatively light and you hold them in your hand. This means it is very much not a rigid surface. Typing on a projective keyboard on e.g. a desk is very unpleasant, because you are pecking a hard, rigid surface with your fingers.

Sure, but at least in my imagination, the primary use-case doesn't care. The primary use-case being that you have a surface, but no/inaccessible laptop/desktop, and you need to type up something long and quickly; perhaps debugging a production problem as a sysadmin, or trying to stop an email chain from going out of control as a PM, or trying to respond a high priority client immediately, during lunch or any other out-of-office reason. Or hell, trying to respond to an HN thread with a long-form comment before the conversation dies out.

I can't trust emails on a smartphones because they're so error-prone. If this thing is reliable in its input, and easy to setup, then the "unpleasantness" of typing on a desk is very low on the list of concerns, unless it's extremely unpleasant, if not outright painful.

And unless you're a hunt-and-pecker (which couldn't feasibly use the tool in the first place, afaict), I don't see how it could be that unpleasant. And playing with the idea on my desk.. it's not the greatest feeling, but its hardly a showstopper.

It's not a general keyboard replacement. It's a few-usecase and higher-constraint keyboard replacement; the only thing that matters is whether it supports those specific fewer usecases significantly better than the currently available alternatives, because it doesn't hinder using the general tool as a fallback.

Very recent? I’ve joined the smartphone club with the Samsung galaxy S1 and every phone I had since than had haptic feedback. Except my iPhone XR now; which is my first edge to edge display smartphone

Product idea: Selfie Type + disconnected keyboard.

Tactile feedback + no need to mess around with bluetooth configurations (or to even support bluetooth). Actually this could be used to revive dead keyboards...

Characorder looks interesting, as I am trying to find something similar to engelbart's chorded keyboard. Do you know how long it takes to become proficient with Characorder?

I would prefer to have camera read my lips rather than read my fingers as I type on nothing.

Spelling something like AbstractFactory<Factory<IEnumerable<TDataType>>> must be fun. (But not as fun as it would be if I had more experience with Perl).

cap abstract cap factory join leb cap factory leb capital letter india cap enumerable join leb capital letter tango cap data join cap type join reb reb reb slap

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Mz3JeYfBTcY&t=465

While I think that the way he has figured out how to input symbols quickly is really cool, I wonder if there wouldn't be a better way. Our autocomplete systems can close brackets and all those nice things. Maybe voice commands could understand structures like templates when inputting commands with your voice?

Indeed, and the example above is just one of many possible ways to achieve the same result. That one works out of the box, but is tedious and cumbersome as you noticed.

To reduce voice strain and make input more reliable, one would spend a little bit of time to set up shortcuts so that e.g. "i enumerable" produces 'IEnumerable' and "of type" expands to '<‸>' and places the cursor at the caret. The voice input system is fully programmable at different levels of abstraction.

As I already talk to myself a lot, I'm way closer to this sort of strategy working than I would have thought before you mentioned it. Though I don't enunciate at all when I talk to myself, so whatever was doing the detecting would need to work on subvocalization.

It reminds me of a talk someone gave about this ad-hoc verbal shorthand someone invented so that they could use speech-to-text to code. The talk sounded really funny but the process did seem fairly productive.