an idea for mouse-based editors

[Rich Zellich]

I have a system on my desk similar to that described by Dave Cornutt, except
that it doesn't have the special for-the-handicapped one-hander keyboard.
What it does have, is a mouse on the right - a standard keyboard in the middle
- and a 5-key "chord" keyboard on the left.

In practice, you leave your left hand on the chord keyboard and your right hand
on the mouse, and your eyes on the screen.  Only when you are typing lots of
text (as opposed to single-character commands or brief snatches of insert or
replacement text) do you move your hands to the qwerty keys.  Since the mouse
can be used to point to anything on the screen (and it's a multi-window system,
allowing the same or different views of the same or different file(s) in each
window), you seldom need to type even short pieces of text with the chord
keyboard - you just point to what you need.

5 keys gives you lower case alphabetics, which takes care of the command words;
using one of the mouse buttons with the chords gives you upper case, and using
a different mouse button gives you numerics.  With 3 mouse buttons and 5 keys,
you get the entire ASCII character set; it takes a while to learn, but once
the chord keyboard is touch-typable, it's the fastest and most intuitive system
I've ever seen.

What all this is called is an "Augment workstation" and it was invented some
15-20 years ago by Douglas Engelbart at SRI (the system was then known as NLS);
it is now marketed by Tymshare and runs on DEC 10's and 20's - it does not (yet)
run on Unix machines, although I think it is being ported to the VAX VMS
environment.

The whole thing is essentially modeless - actually single-mode - since you're
always in "command" mode.  There is a special pseudo-mode for running insertion
of multiple paragraphs of text (a RETURN delineates the end of a paragraph and
normally terminates the input phase of an Insert command so the system is
looking for a new command word) that is essentially just a Repeat Last Command
function; but it takes deliberate and non-standard effort to get into it so
it's quite clear when you're using it (and if you forget, your next command
just goes in as text anyway, so it's safe).

Eat your hearts out...
-Rich

Disclaimer: I'm no longer even a Tymshare customer, using Augment on someone
else's system (the NIC's, for the list-of-lists), so I have no interest at all
in the commercial viability of the product; I'm just a very satisfied user who
far prefers Augment's BASE editor to ed, vi, or emacs.