X Geek - stuff you don’t know

For sure, CS is one science that does not work good with it’s legacy. One of the most obvious examples are input devices and their support. So obvious is the poorness of input device software and their “diversity” that we all accept it as imminent. Surely this is the way it must be? Well.. NO. This is the way it was built to be, not the way it should be.

XGeek.org proudly presents to you, from the depths of low-level programming, driver architecture, multi-language wrappers and windows hacking, Project Free Input, a series of articles on using input technologies to improve productivity while sitting at your beloved PC.

First and an irreplaceable piece of hardware that we all have is our keyboard. Not only have we had it for as long as we have got our hands on a PC but we have also as much accepted it as it is.

The History of keyboard

Human race first came in contact with a keyboard as a typewriter. First, Remington, typewriter came out in 1872.  The first layout was alphabetic. Not only inefficient, this layout also soon became a big problem because letters used frequently in consecutive order in the English language layed very close together. This produced a lot of jamming as soon as people started typing at, what is now know, as intermediate speeds. In 1974. a new layout came out. It was the oh so famous .. QWERTY. This layout is probably the one you have in front of you with slight changes. It is named by the first 6 letters at the top-left of the letter layout. This layout was specifically designed to separate consecutively used letters as far apart as possible. This actually means you get slowed down. Let me repeat that for you. You keyboard is designed to slow you down. Not only is this layout bad in traditional language writing, it is as bad for special features (shortcuts..). For example, the first keyboards were all CAPS but the “SHIFT” key existed for moving the carriage. So.. it stayed as an “implementation” on the regular keyboard. For another similar example, ask yourself when was the last time you actually pressed “CAPS LOCK” and decided to type all capital letters. This button actually occupies a spot on the base row (the row where your fingers rest, which you can reach fastest). In 1878. Remington no.2 hit the shelf, with both upper and lower keys, but still with the “SHIFT” key. In 1932. already an attempt was made to change things around and the Dvorak layout came out taking into consideration letter groups in the English language. It never caught up and we are still using the layout that was invented BEFORE the keyboard.

Do not despair for whether you are on Win, Linux or Mac you can “kinda” easily change your keyboard layout into another .. more appropriate one.

Much more about layouts will be covered in later articles. (changing, choosing layouts..)

How smart is your keyboard?

The answer is.. it’s not. Why? Because it is cheaper to overwhelm you with fake advertisements and features than to actually pay developers to provide you with additional software that will liberate your keyboard into an actual 100+ key input device. This is one of the biggest and most contra productive problems of the today’s keyboard. Take a look at two general keys. Minus and plus. These two keys can be: volume keys, scrolling keys (horizontal/vertical), focused value increase/decrease keys, application switches.. and who knows what else if they were programmable. The point is. Your keyboard is STUPID. And the “brain” of any device is it’s driver. So… XGeek.org brings you a Programmable Keyboard Driver project as the first subproject of Free Input.

PS in case you are wondering about ergonomics this will also be covered in later articles.