The Art of Huang Fu

Like many digital artists, I often find myself in an involved maneuver with my right hand on the graphic tablet or mouse and my left hand simultaneously on the keyboard, pressing for shortcut keys .. or worse – trying to type out sentences .. and all the while with my eyes on the screen. Well, keys on the left side (QWERT, ASDF, etc) are easy enough but those right-sided ones can be rather hit ‘n’ miss ! Well I finally googled up for possible solutions and came across .. The Matias Half-QWERTY Keyboard.

You type the left-side letters (QWERT, etc) as normal but to type the right-side letters (YUIOP, etc), you hold down the spacebar with your thumb and you tap the left keys corresponding mirror-wise to the right keys, so ‘P’ is space-Q, ‘O’ is space-W, etc. Why mirror the right keys (so you get POIUY) rather than directly overlaying the keys (so you’d get YUIOP)? This mirroring works best, esp. with touch-typists (What? You haven’t learnt to touch-type? Hmmph, I don’t wanna hear about it!). This is due to how our brains work. Subconciously, most people can much easier do with their left little finger what their right little finger would do. Won’t using the spacebar as a sort-of shift key simply produce a lot of unwanted spaces in my typing? The keyboard’s intelligent enough to know that if you want a space, you’d simply be tapping it, and if you want to use it as a sort-of shift key, you’d hold it down to type the corresponding key .. the keyboard knows!

What about those who want/need the right-handed version? No worries, there’s one where QWERT is mirrored (so you get TREWQ) and mapped onto YUIOP.

Needless to say (<-- strange terminology 'cos I'm gonna say it anyway) this keyboard is terrific for the handicapped with use of only one hand.

That all said, I believe this half-QWERTY keyboard technique is patented by Matias and there are those who've received warnings of legal action for even providing software that turns normal a keyboard into something similar to that!

Anyway, you can find out more about this keyboard plus Matias' other products (including a foldable keyboard) via their website. You can also experience the use of the Matias Half-QWERTY Keyboard by this flash demo.