The key arrangement of the conventional type keyboard has been in use for many years, and has remained unchanged notwithstanding a variety of suggestions for rearranging the keyboard to increase the keystroking efficiency or reduce the burden on the keyboard operator. The conventional key arrangement is sometimes referred to as QWERTY, representing the first five letters in the uppermost row of alphabetic characters.
Many of the suggestions, which involve rearranging the keyboard, have fallen by the wayside for the simple reasons that such a rearranged keyboard would be unfamiliar to the large population of keyboard operators and therefore represent an additional burden to those operators in "learning" a new keyboard.
Other suggestions have involved adding one or more different "control" keys so as to enable encoding different character or character combinations with respect to a number of the keys. A big disadvantage in suggestions of this sort is a substantial amount of retraining required in order for an operator to effectively use the additional coding levels provided by the "control" keys.
For example, Bullock in U.S. Pat. No. 1,275,657, suggested adding additional keys to the conventional keyboard, each of which, when depressed, would enable the printing of a word or phrase. Seiber, in U.S. Pat. No. 2,717,686, suggested using standard keys for phrase or word printing when an additional key or foot pedal was simultaneously actuated. In the absence of depression of the additional key or foot pedal, a single character or symbol is printed. Seiber also disclosed, in the same patent, that by providing a plurality of such special keys, the word or phrase printing capacity could be multiplied. In still another arrangement, Schaefer, U.S. Pat. No. 3,289,804, disclosed an extension of the well-known Selectric typewriter which employed a wholly conventional keyboard. However, when selected ones of the keys were depressed beyond normal depression distance, the machine simulated the result of depression of a specific key sequence, i.e., a specific alpha sequence, function sequence, numeric sequence or a mixed sequence.
The present invention seeks to improve on this prior art by providing a text recorder which enables improved keyboard efficiency for an operator by reducing the number of input strokes required during text typing. The term text recorder, in the present application, has reference to conventional typewriters, i.e, those producing a printed output via impact printing or otherwise, or typewriter-like devices which produce a text display employing a CRT or equivalent techniques, or devices capable of both types of outputs.
Frequency of word usage studies show that half of all communications in English are accomplished with less than 100 different words; every fourth word is among the 10-12 most common words in the written language, and two or three words make up about 10% of all communication. English is not unique in this usage of redundant words, indeed, this characteristic is found in the rest of the major languages. It is therefore an object of the present invention to improve keyboard efficiency by providing a practical and usable text recorder wherein many of these common words can be encoded and printed or displayed, with a single stroke. Reduction in keystroke effort is not limited to writing complete words from a single keystroke, indeed, it is also important to provide for commonly used syllables.
In accordance with one aspect of the invention, words or syllables are associated with those conventional keys in the keyboard which are infrequently used during text typing applications. In a normal mode of operation, the text recorder produces a conventional output, however, in a multi-character mode, the text recorder produces a word or syllable when the associated key is stroked. One large group of such keys are numerical keys. In order to expand the number of words or syllables comprising multiple characters which can be recorded with a single keystroke, each of the numeric keys can be associated both with a word and with a suffix if it is realized that words are called for after functions such as a space function or carriage return, and suffixes are only called for when preceded by an alphabetic character or a hyphen. Thus, stroking a single one of the numeric keys can produce, in a normal mode of operation, the recording of the associated numeral and in a multi-character mode, the recording of a suffix, if preceded by an alphabetic character or hyphen, or recording of an entire word is preceded by a keyboard function such as a space or carriage return operation. In addition to the numeric keys, the punctuation marks and other miscellaneous or graphic symbols on the conventional typewriter keyboard can similarly be employed. Further expansion of this capability can be achieved by providing for commonly used multiple word phrases, such as the phrases: "will be"; "and the"; "for the"; "in the"; "of the"; "from the". This is effected by associating each of the keys arranged to produce the words: "and"; "for"; "in"; "of"; "from"-with a second character sequence representing: space "be"; space "the"; space "the"; space "the"; space "the"; space "the"-. On the first actuation of the associated key in the multi-character mode, the text recorder produces the first word of the phrase, the second sequential actuation of the identical key produces the second sequence.
To further enhance the effectiveness of additional equipment required to provide the above-mentioned features, the codes representative of words or syllables produced in response to a single keystroke can be stored, and by providing a response to a shift or shift lock status, the first character in the sequence can be capitalized, a preselected character(s) in the sequence can be capitalized, or the entire sequence can be capitalized.
In accordance with another feature of the invention, when in a multi-character mode, actuation of any of the punctuation marks results in automatic production of a space function following the punctuation mark.