what is a keyboard

What is a keyboard

In addition to standard flat keyboard layouts where all alphanumeric keys are grouped taogether, as was the case in virtually all typewriters, recent ergonomic keyboard designs feature creative key placement and shape. These keyboards are designed to increase user comfort, typing speed, and to reduce common ailments associated with prolonged keyboard use such as carpal tunnel syndrome. Most popular among the ergonomic keyboards is the split design, in which keys pressed by the left hand are physically separated from those pressed by the right hand. As much as ten centimeters may separate the key groups, providing a more natural hand position than a single group of keys does. Some ergonomic keyboards go so far as to offer two completely separate boards that can be positioned independently of one another. Other innovative keyboard designs include chorded keyboards, hand keyers, and Kanji tablets. Chorded keyboards typically have between 5 and 12 keys, which are pressed together in order to form letters in a fasion akin to guitar chording. Chorded keyboards are usually intended for one-hand use. Similar to the chorded keyboard is the hand keyer. While the operation of a hand keyer is comparable a chorded keyboard in that multiple fingers are used simultaneously in order to type a single letter, hand keyers are worn on the hand or arm instead of lying on a table. This makes them more comfortable for some users, as well as affording a certain amount of mobility for portable devices such as PDAs. Kanji and other tablets, which have super-small keying surfaces capable of supporting hundreds of characters in a reasonable amount of space, are designed for use with languages which have too many characters to assign an individual key on a conventional keyboard. This is typical of many Asian languages. Kanji tablets are now considered outdated, as more efficient text input systems have been designed which allow Asian character input on conventional-style keyboards. Keyboards designed for use with these systems have an additional 5 keys dedicated to interface with specialty character input software.