On Fri 12 Sep 2008 15:42:31 Stroller wrote: > On 11 Sep 2008, at 14:17, Kostis Anagnostopoulos wrote: > > On Thu 11 Sep 2008 01:31:27 Didier Raboud wrote: > >> nickd wrote: > >> Take a look at the other method previously pointed by Dan : > >> http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/ > >> > >> It's GPL... > > > > I don't like Dasher because it introduces uncontrolled "waiting > > states", > > in order for the target letter to reach the center. > > Surely the "waiting state" is controlled - by moving the cursor to > the right (I imagine tilting the Freerunner) the stream of letters > speeds up.
Yet, sometimes you just have to slowdown untill the needed letter appears. In any way, it is not the same as a deterministic action under your controll, lets say, i move from point a to point b, and it would take me as much time as i like! Thats what i meant with "uncontrollable", i din't mean totally-out-of-my-controll. > > On Dasher's site they make a comparison with car-driving. > > I think that if we were given the chance, > > we would preffere a click-to-destination instead of a steering- > > wheel car-UI. > > At some point analogies always break - probably as soon as you start > using them to expand outside anything that the original analogiser > had in mind. ;) > > The destination is the completed sentence of words. It is held > initially inside your mind, and it is impossible to give the target > device this "destination" without any intervening steps. Just as we > don't yet have autonomous automobiles, either, a "steering-wheel" (or > some other control device) is clearly necessary to get the words out > of your head & into the device. Wel, the target for me is the letters-of-a-world, not the world, so from this point of view, yes click or signature-like typing is more like controlling a variable but a steering wheel is like controlling the derivative of that variable. Hence the wait-states! I need to say that, concerning mobile devices, i had try to envision such a input-method myself, and the Dasher is as close as it gets to what i might had end up with. My kudos to the programmers and designers of Dasher. _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community