QWERTY and keyboard reform: the soft keyboard option

✍ Scribed by Geoff Cumming

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1984
• Weight: 396 KB
• Volume: 21
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0020-7373
• DOI: 10.1016/s0020-7373(84)80070-x

✦ Synopsis

The familiar QWERTY keyboard has become an international standard, and is the universal layout for computer and typewriter keyboards despite evidence that other layouts are easier to learn and can be used more rapidly. The hard-won skill of the many QWERTY users has been an effective bar to keyboard reform. However, the "soft keyboard", in which the assignment of characters to keys can easily be changed, now offers the possibility that an improved keyboard could be chosen and implemented along with QWERTY on dual-layout keyboards. Keyboards now serve principally for computer input, rather than only as part of the typewriter: this expansion of role modifies and complicates the choice of a new standard keyboard layout. This article discusses keyboard reform and concludes that the soft keyboard does, indeed, offer a promising opportunity for progress.