NEO ergonomic keyboard-layout, version 1.0 available for L..

Mark. wrote:
 > Is there a link to an English site explaining the advantages of the Neo layout. I saw a table halfway down your page
 > but its in German. The numbers looked promising.

Not yet but if there is interest in this, I'll put a bit of work into
that. It shouldn't be too much work anyway. The numbers look pretty good
and you can see, it is not only optimised for german use but for the
english language, too. Not as optimised as for german, but better than
dvorak, so it should be a nice job either. It's like that, because
modern german contains a lot of english vocabulary, so that the
statistical usage of most letters are nearly the same. The greatest
difference between english and german letter-statistics was the "Y" and
"Z". The probability is nearly vice versa. On QWERTY the "Y" and "Z" had
to be changed, so german keyboard is QWERTZ. On NEO you'll find the "Y"
and the "Z" both on relativ low-priority places, but the "Y" is on the
baseline. That should make NEO intersting for other languages. If you
even change the Umlaut-Keys on the left lower row with french or
swedish/danish special-characters, the NEO should be easy multinational.

There are only very few serious used characters you can't write with
NEO. You have deadkeys for '"', '°', '~', '´', '`', "¸", "˜" and so on,
even most greek letters (for mathematic, programming and academic
usage), as
"@ºÅ‚çωκεγªι\¡¨£¤|¦{[]}­­­­¹²³¼½¾÷«»¨δı@€øσν®þð¥`ΔÄ°α¢ØΣΝ™ÞÐœ'æþζβµ×Œ~ÆÞΖΒΜ¸ñõãÄ©Å©",
just to show of some of the special characters that you can build
easily. And that are not all, there are so much more.

I designed the layout for german language, but german is not really only
"german" any more. We have to write very many special characters of
nearly any european language here (as we are almost in the center of
europe), so the NEO is more something you would call "european" now (as
Meier 1964 has done before), but there were some characters that had
objective statistical bad places, so I did a total build from scrach,
the only thing I took complete over was the layout of the vocals on left
hand. They were statistically and ergonomic perfect, I think. Even much
better than the Dvorak from around 1930 (other language usage in that
time).

So you'll find the NEO is not really neo (new), but simply took all
ergonomic keyboards before, calculated it over with modern computers and
the statistical processing power, put some new ideas in and the best of
the layouts before.

I think it's a good job, but I would never say it was mine alone. I
think earlier or later anyone would have brought up a layout like this
(maybe with some minor changes). Because it's
statistic/ergonomic/mathematic. That's all.

It works fine for me, I can say. Writes smoother than any other I tried
before. You'll write most words with both hands, changing from letter to
letter, the letters on one hand you'll find mostly drumming from center
to end, sometimes (seldom) from end to center, which is slower, and
very, very rare words produce "worst case" scenarios. These scenarios
are almost in every second word on QWERTY, by the way and you can't
avoid them total statistically either. So I don't worry about that rare
cases, and don't worry about the theoretical percent or so that you may
or may not improve the layout. It should be almost perfect - from the
statistic point of view, counting in the ergonomic paradigm of NEO layout.

So. Should I try to translate the NEO article for you native english
speakers? What do you think?

Greetings Hanno<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: NEO ergonomic keyboard-layout, version 1.0 available for L.. 

  >> Is there a link to an English site explaining the advantages of the Neo layout. I saw a table halfway down your
  >> page but its in German. The numbers looked promising.
 >
 >Not yet but if there is interest in this, I'll put a bit of work into
 >that. It shouldn't be too much work anyway. The numbers look pretty good
 >and you can see, it is not only optimised for german use but for the
 >english language, too. Not as optimised as for german, but better than
 >dvorak, so it should be a nice job either. It's like that, because
 >modern german contains a lot of english vocabulary, so that the
 >statistical usage of most letters are nearly the same. The greatest
 >difference between english and german letter-statistics was the "Y" and
 >"Z". The probability is nearly vice versa. On QWERTY the "Y" and "Z" had
 >to be changed, so german keyboard is QWERTZ. On NEO you'll find the "Y"
 >and the "Z" both on relativ low-priority places, but the "Y" is on the
 >baseline. That should make NEO intersting for other languages. If you
 >even change the Umlaut-Keys on the left lower row with french or
 >swedish/danish special-characters, the NEO should be easy multinational.
 >
 >There are only very few serious used characters you can't write with
 >NEO. You have deadkeys for '"', '°', '~', '´', '`', "¸", "?" and so on,
 >even most greek letters (for mathematic, programming and academic
 >usage), as
 >"@º?ç????ª?\¡¨£¤|¦{[]}­­­­¹²³¼½¾÷«»¨??@€ø??®þð¥`???¢Ø??™ÞÐœ'æþ??µ×Œ~ÆÞ???¸ñõã??",
 >just to show of some of the special characters that you can build
 >easily. And that are not all, there are so much more.
 >
 >I designed the layout for german language, but german is not really only
 >"german" any more. We have to write very many special characters of
 >nearly any european language here (as we are almost in the center of
 >europe), so the NEO is more something you would call "european" now (as
 >Meier 1964 has done before), but there were some characters that had
 >objective statistical bad places, so I did a total build from scrach,
 >the only thing I took complete over was the layout of the vocals on left
 >hand. They were statistically and ergonomic perfect, I think. Even much
 >better than the Dvorak from around 1930 (other language usage in that
 >time).
 >
 >So you'll find the NEO is not really neo (new), but simply took all
 >ergonomic keyboards before, calculated it over with modern computers and
 >the statistical processing power, put some new ideas in and the best of
 >the layouts before.
 >
 >I think it's a good job, but I would never say it was mine alone. I
 >think earlier or later anyone would have brought up a layout like this
 >(maybe with some minor changes). Because it's
 >statistic/ergonomic/mathematic. That's all.
 >
 >It works fine for me, I can say. Writes smoother than any other I tried
 >before. You'll write most words with both hands, changing from letter to
 >letter, the letters on one hand you'll find mostly drumming from center
 >to end, sometimes (seldom) from end to center, which is slower, and
 >very, very rare words produce "worst case" scenarios. These scenarios
 >are almost in every second word on QWERTY, by the way and you can't
 >avoid them total statistically either. So I don't worry about that rare
 >cases, and don't worry about the theoretical percent or so that you may
 >or may not improve the layout. It should be almost perfect - from the
 >statistic point of view, counting in the ergonomic paradigm of NEO layout.
 >
 >So. Should I try to translate the NEO article for you native english
 >speakers? What do you think?

I think the important thing is the numbers that relate to speed. What keyboards to do think are an improvement over the
regular ones? Have you seen / tried the Fingerworks?<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: NEO ergonomic keyboard-layout, version 1.0 available for L.. 

Hanno, have you seen the 'new standard keyboard' ? Letters are
arranged alphabetically, abcd/efgh/ijklm on the left side. Your
emphasis on common letter bigraphs and trigraphs makes NEO a superior
choice. I hope it catches on, but given the very limited success of
the dvorak it will be an up hill struggle.
Good luck.
 >> Stay informed about: NEO ergonomic keyboard-layout, version 1.0 available for L.. 

sfdphdj wrote:
  > Hanno, have you seen the 'new standard keyboard' ? Letters are
  > arranged alphabetically, abcd/efgh/ijklm on the left side. Your
  > emphasis on common letter bigraphs and trigraphs makes NEO a superior
  > choice. I hope it catches on, but given the very limited success of
  > the dvorak it will be an up hill struggle.
  > Good luck.

Thanks. I know that. And to be honest, I did not build that map to make
the world better, but just to optimise my own writing speed, because I
sucks on QWERTZ and stagnated for nearly 20 years (around 300 strokes
per minute). I don't see any chance to make this layout common, I think
it's really a personal choice for people that have to write much and
fast (like chatters the most likely, haha).
Maybe it has a chance to become the "standard ergnomomic". If I'm lucky,
but I don't give me away for illusions.

In fact I noticed that "new standard keyboard" and I was amused by that.
It's more a keyboard for kindergarden as for real life (fast writers).
But it looks nice and I appreciate the try to turn the back on the old,
bad QWERTY/Z. I found it on the german magazine-page of the "Der
Spiegel" (engl. "the mirror")
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/technologie/0,1518,338643,00.html" target="_blank">http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/technologie/0,1518,338643,00.html</a>
But indeed that keyboard is "ergonomic" to speak the way that the
machine is modified to ease the use (for non typers and kids).

And I wrote a short notice to the author, because it was so bad
recherced and the problem was too simplified. I think instead of pushing
up more and more processor-power and that, it can't be that bad to just
start at ourselves and ergonomize the human interface, because on a
486/25 and on a AMD3800+ we type the same speed and that is most of the
time we spend on a computer. Money is lost, time is lost, fun is lost -
there is no sense in this. The standard keyboard nowadays is not the
worst possible solution, I admit, but it's far, far away from every
halve baken try for an efficient, ergonomic human interface.

I don't know how many people out there have changed the last month to
NEO, but I know from the hit-statistic of my website that there is a
very great interest in this kind of thing. And I got some letters of
people, that switched and that are quite happy with that and gained
speed. The interest was indeed *much* more than I could have imagined
before, I admit.

So - it'll be a personal choice, no missionary work.

And I even don't think I'll make a single Euro with this kind of stuff.
But indeed, I'll make some money with typing faster and spending fewer
time on problems. That's my personal gain and that can't be missed.
That's the way I look at it.

Greetings Hanno<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: NEO ergonomic keyboard-layout, version 1.0 available for L.. 

Once you can definitely prove its superiority, the key is to get it used in schools so children are taught the best way
from the start. Speech recogination sure is taking a long time to get there. But there will be always a demand for
being able to communicate without speaking (for privacy, as well as speech recognition wouldn't work well with high
amounts of ambient noise.) So please translate the part of the page with the numbers. People love numbers. Numbers
sell.

 >Hanno, have you seen the 'new standard keyboard' ? Letters are
 >arranged alphabetically, abcd/efgh/ijklm on the left side. Your
 >emphasis on common letter bigraphs and trigraphs makes NEO a superior
 >choice. I hope it catches on, but given the very limited success of
 >the dvorak it will be an up hill struggle.
 >Good luck.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: NEO ergonomic keyboard-layout, version 1.0 available for L.. 

Mark. wrote:
 > Once you can definitely prove its superiority, the key is to get it used in schools so children are taught the best way
 > from the start. Speech recogination sure is taking a long time to get there. But there will be always a demand for
 > being able to communicate without speaking (for privacy, as well as speech recognition wouldn't work well with high
 > amounts of ambient noise.) So please translate the part of the page with the numbers. People love numbers. Numbers
 > sell.

Hi Mark <sweating>

done this
It was a hell of a job, but you can access now the page on english. I
hope it is not too bad. I sewed it with a hot needle, I guess and my
english is not native. But I think you can understand most of the stuff.

The "readme" file in the archives are not converted to english yet.

have fun

But don't vomit if you read my english. First I tried to "altavista"
this but it was such a mess, that noone ever could have understood. I
worked that mess over, but I think it would have been better to
translate that from scratch. What can I say? Try.

greetings Hanno<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: NEO ergonomic keyboard-layout, version 1.0 available for L.. 

damn...

dont click on any links. Altavista messed with them too... I'll fix that
now... Just read...
 >> Stay informed about: NEO ergonomic keyboard-layout, version 1.0 available for L.. 

 >http://pebbles.schattenlauf.de/layout/index.html

Is the XP version compatible with Win 2000?<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: NEO ergonomic keyboard-layout, version 1.0 available for L.. 

Mark. wrote:
  >>http://pebbles.schattenlauf.de/layout/index.html
 > Is the XP version compatible with Win 2000?

I don't have any Win2k here to test it. So I admit, I don't know.

greetings Hanno<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: NEO ergonomic keyboard-layout, version 1.0 available for L.. 

Have you ever seen the 'fitaly' keyboard? It is meant for PDAs and
puts the most common letters near the center, for a shorter hunt before
you peck.
BTW, you might want to offer the dfjk-etni transposition option as part
of the package. Its simplicity might generate interest while its
limitations would encourage the big step to NEO. It might work the
same way as a lead-loss promotion. Once 'inside the store', NEO will
be easier to 'sell'.

With highest regards,
Stephen Kearney
 >> Stay informed about: NEO ergonomic keyboard-layout, version 1.0 available for L..