Today’s what-if column on XKCD (Phone Keypad) discusses typing things on an older phone, using the keypad to make letters by pressing multiple times. It further discusses typing things on a regular QWERTY keyboard using one hand or the other.
I think there are two errors in the column. However, I don’t have a user ID there and the registration button isn’t working! In the spirit of this comic (xkcd: Duty Calls), can someone go over there and report this pending disaster of epic proportions?
The two errors I see are:
In the long string of numbers used to convert letters to numbers, shouldn’t there be four 9’s at the end?
In the section on typing things with one hand, it includes a “b” among the letters typed with the right hand – isn’t it normally typed with the left hand for touch-typists?
Since there are four 7s I assume there should be four 9s as well. But I don’t know anything about how to parse that.
As for the B, I was taught it could be typed with either hand and I’m reasonably ambidextrous about it depending on what each hand was doing in the process of typing when I need to hit b. Perhaps he included B in both the left hand and right hand scripts.
I surprised about B swinging both ways. The idea of touch typing is that your fingers learn to jump into positions without your brain really thinking about them. Were you taught you could choose one way and then stick with it, or that you could sometimes use one hand and other times use the other? Also, wouldn’t Y work the same way?
The tr command is a translation. The two strings should have the same length. The alphabet has 26 letters listed, but I only count 25 numbers. I agree that the missing letter is an additional z at the end.
ETA: The man page for TR says
So we effectively have a silent 9 at the end, and the script should function properly.
For all the standard keyboards I’ve used the B is equidistant from the left and right home keys. I was taught to use whichever was most convenient as there was nothing magical about which hand pushed the key so long as it got pushed correctly within the sequence and didn’t slow you down. I’d say that 90% of the time I use my left index finger. For example, I just seem to find it slightly more convenient to use the left shift than the right so when I need a capital B, I’ll often hit shift with my left pinkie then hit the b with my right index finger.
Though in practicing it just now I’m nimble at doing it three out of the four possible ways (left pinkie/left index, left pinkie/right index, left index/right pinkie). Right index/right pinkie is awkward.
This is not true of Y which is closer to the right side home key (J) than the left (f).
That said, whenever I’ve used ergonomic keyboards that split the keys into different sections, the B has always been grouped with the left side.
My high school keyboarding instructor was big on “if it works for you and you can meet the 80wpm test requirement I don’t care how you do it but you’ll probably find these methods a pretty good start.” As a result when using the number row I generally type 1-7 with my left hand and only 8-9-0 with my right.
According to this (http://www.fcps.edu/ChurchillRoadES/keyboard_practice.html) and many other places on the web, a ‘b’ is typed with the left hand. I think, for the purpose of the what-if, it should use whatever the correct hand is for touch typing, not what people casually use. That is, it’s not meant to find words or sentences that can be typed by reaching for whatever keys you can reach with one hand – keeping my left pinkie on the ‘a’, I can easily reach to the “ik,” column and can stretch to the ‘p’, so I could type any sentence with one hand.
And I’m not arguing that it should. But, the B is a special case in that unlike any other it is equidistant to either hand. There is no advantage, other than instructors arbitrarily picking a hand to teach, to using left or right. Any more than there is to saying that space bar should be pressed only with the left thumb.
The question of B is not relevant to the What If insofar as it is about cell phone key pads. The other stuff is just filler being creative with whatever arbitrary distinctions he decided to play with, so he gets to define the rules. I have no idea if he types B’s with his right hand, ambidextrously or just messed up.
But if you read the comments over there you’ll see several people posting that their typing relationship with B is similar to mine.
He probably intended to make the strings the same length, but didn’t notice the missing 9, and it coincidentally got through his sanity-testing because of the string-extending rule.
[ul]
[li]Wikipedia has “B” in the same zone as “F” in their graphic, i.e. left index finger zone.[/li][li]With regard to your comment, “B” is under “G” more than it is under “H” (less horizontal distance). “Y” is above “H” more than it is above “Y.” And to me, “Y” looks less ambiguously on the right than “B” kind of looks to be on the left.[/li][li]Not really an error, but the phrase “MMO” looks to me like it’s missing a noun. “Massively multiplayer online…” what? Again, this is common usage along with MMOG, it’s just jarring.[/li][/ul]
I actually just measured and on all three of my non-ergonomic keyboards the B is perfectly (or as perfectly as can be measured by my crude device) centered under the G and H keys.
I was referring to my home computer, but now (at least) for work, you’re right, ~9.5 mm from far edge to far edge. They’re roughly the same shape, so looks like you’re right and I might’ve been illusion’d, or home is different but probably not. Y is definitely in H territory, though. Reaching F > Y is uncomfortable as well compared to J. B is equally comfortable from F or J, that is to say equally uncomfortable.