Yeah, I saw the comment in github but it felt too surreal and without looking at the patent I didn’t want to assume anything. But hey thanks for the link to the actual patent, I have had a look at it, and read some parts of it and I’m still kinda confused about the whole situation with this keyboard.
The patent was published 10 years ago. It says it is withdrawn but I don’t know if we can somehow see the reason or if it was voluntarily withdrawn.
The patent itself recognizes that the hexagonal keyboard alone lacks on innovation to warrant the patent so the author proposes together with that the “best” order for different languages.
Then the code in github seems to have been uploaded 6 months ago. Maybe they withdrew the patent until they can show an example?
But how often do devs working on some free software code go through the trouble of making patents? And the code appearing such a long time after the patent… I don’t know, I don’t like throwing accusations without proof but the whole thing feels like they are more interested in the patent than creating the keyboard but I can’t be certain of it.
And then we get to the whole ordeal of the key positions, changing over different languages, trying to choose the optimal positions… I don’t think that it is enough to be patented (but I’ve seen worse so…) and likely it won’t ever be something people can agree on. Creating such “best” order would be impossible and probably each person would have different ideas. Now, predicting the next most likely letter… That would be more interesting but it was done ages ago too. And the most important aspect of what makes us fast typing is not the order of the letters, but the fact that we have muscle memory to reach them once we are used to a layout. As I use three different languages daily, using the same keyboard layout for all, is the best option, but with this idea I would need to change the layout of the keyboard… It would make me so incredibly slow!
And more in detail with the patent, many claims are borderline ridiculous. But this comment is already long enough so I’ll leave it herewith my final criticism for the author. Forget the patent, and just create a good keyboard that people want to use.
The patent was published 10 years ago. It says it is withdrawn but I don’t know if we can somehow see the reason or if it was voluntarily withdrawn.
They didn’t pay the annual renewal fee:
01.08.2018 – Application deemed to be withdrawn, date of legal effect [2019/02]
28.08.2018 – Despatch of communication that the application is deemed to be withdrawn, reason: renewal fee not paid in time [2019/02]
And the most important aspect of what makes us fast typing is not the order of the letters, but the fact that we have muscle memory to reach them once we are used to a layout.
Some of the proposed applications of the patent are vending machines and car navigation systems . For vending machines, the aspect of muscle memory is probably not very dominant and thus, an optimised layout might be beneficial. Yet, as the layout is ‘different’ than usual, people usung the vending machines might also be confused and thus, the time benefit from the novel optimal layout is probably also non existent in that use case.
For the car navigation system it’s probably beneficial. After some time you probably have internalised the location of the letters and thus can type faster. For navigation systems it’s probably not a frequent use case that the keyboard language and thus its layout is changed regularly.
For a smartphone keyboard, I agree, it’s odd if you have to search for the location of the same letter on different layouts at different places.
Yeah, I saw the comment in github but it felt too surreal and without looking at the patent I didn’t want to assume anything. But hey thanks for the link to the actual patent, I have had a look at it, and read some parts of it and I’m still kinda confused about the whole situation with this keyboard.
The patent was published 10 years ago. It says it is withdrawn but I don’t know if we can somehow see the reason or if it was voluntarily withdrawn.
The patent itself recognizes that the hexagonal keyboard alone lacks on innovation to warrant the patent so the author proposes together with that the “best” order for different languages.
Then the code in github seems to have been uploaded 6 months ago. Maybe they withdrew the patent until they can show an example?
But how often do devs working on some free software code go through the trouble of making patents? And the code appearing such a long time after the patent… I don’t know, I don’t like throwing accusations without proof but the whole thing feels like they are more interested in the patent than creating the keyboard but I can’t be certain of it.
And then we get to the whole ordeal of the key positions, changing over different languages, trying to choose the optimal positions… I don’t think that it is enough to be patented (but I’ve seen worse so…) and likely it won’t ever be something people can agree on. Creating such “best” order would be impossible and probably each person would have different ideas. Now, predicting the next most likely letter… That would be more interesting but it was done ages ago too. And the most important aspect of what makes us fast typing is not the order of the letters, but the fact that we have muscle memory to reach them once we are used to a layout. As I use three different languages daily, using the same keyboard layout for all, is the best option, but with this idea I would need to change the layout of the keyboard… It would make me so incredibly slow!
And more in detail with the patent, many claims are borderline ridiculous. But this comment is already long enough so I’ll leave it herewith my final criticism for the author. Forget the patent, and just create a good keyboard that people want to use.
They didn’t pay the annual renewal fee:
epo.org
Some of the proposed applications of the patent are vending machines and car navigation systems . For vending machines, the aspect of muscle memory is probably not very dominant and thus, an optimised layout might be beneficial. Yet, as the layout is ‘different’ than usual, people usung the vending machines might also be confused and thus, the time benefit from the novel optimal layout is probably also non existent in that use case.
For the car navigation system it’s probably beneficial. After some time you probably have internalised the location of the letters and thus can type faster. For navigation systems it’s probably not a frequent use case that the keyboard language and thus its layout is changed regularly.
For a smartphone keyboard, I agree, it’s odd if you have to search for the location of the same letter on different layouts at different places.