Multi-press input and control device and process

#This invention relates to textual and control character input technology as used in hardware keyboards, in on-screen software keyboards composed of two or more keys, or in other input devices.

#Current key-based user input technologies present various limitations due to the decreasing size of devices and consequently the space available devoted to user input. Some of these problems include: 1) a large number of small keys which cause the user to hit the wrong one, 2) sequential pressing of a single key to select one of a number of possible letters, 3) having to switch between different input mode screens to enter letters, numbers, or punctuation, 4) predictive completion methods that provide the wrong suggestions, 5) limited or no capability to enter punctuation, control characters, or function keys, and 6) having to introduce artificial delays between certain character combinations.

#Standard 104-key, WINDOWS keyboards are usually laid out in the QWERTY scheme and provide a full American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) character set via shift keys in addition to other functions. These are large and prevent any minimization at least because each letter and number must be individually represented. As a result, the various re-arrangements of QWERTY keyboards for laptops are large and hardly more compressed.

#The present invention will become more fully understood from the detailed description given below and the accompanying drawings which are given by way of illustration only, and thus do not limit the present invention, wherein:

#FIG. 1 is a layout of a keyboard with two input devices;

#FIG. 2 is a layout of a keyboard with four input devices;

#The detailed description begins with the simplest keyboard possible for explanatory purposes. FIG. 1 depicts the simplest keyboard 1200 possible using a 1×2 matrix of input devices. This keyboard is composed of two input devices, input device 1210 and input device 1220. Each input device has two corresponding character positions, position 1 on the left 1211 and position 2 on the right 1212 of input device 1210; and position 3 on the left 1221 and position 4 on the right 1222 of input device 2 1220. The character position on an input device that corresponds to the position of the input device itself on the keyboard is highlighted using some combination of either bold, underline, boxed, encircled or some other method. For instance, position 1211 on input device 1210 of the keyboard 1200 is highlighted with a bold underlined 1.

#A character on the keyboard can be selected by the following method. The input device that displays/contains the character of interest is pressed first. Then another input device is pressed that corresponds to the position of the character of interest on the first input device pressed. For example, to select the character at position 1221, first press input device 1220 since the character at position 1221 is visible on that input device, then press input device 1210 since the character at position 1221 is located in the left position on input device 1220. Similarly, to select the character at position 1222, press input device 1220 twice.

#In other words, keyboard 1200 defines a one dimensional matrix. To select an element in the matrix, first an inner matrix containing the element is selected, then, based on the position of the element of interest 1221 in the matrix, a second key (which can be the same key) is selected to identify the element 1221 within the inner matrix.