Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, May 8, 1994                   TAG: 9405040030
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: F-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BY MICHAEL PUTZEL/ BOSTON GLOBE
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

COMPUTER MAKERS TRY FOR LESS MUSCLE IN KEYBOARDS

The quick march of computers from the steno pool and counting room to the executive suite and now into nearly 40 percent of U.S. homes has made typing more important than penmanship. Contrary to the supervisor's popular defense of a few years ago, real men do type. And so do their wives and children.

There are lots of smart people working on other ways of communicating with the machines we encounter every day, but even the most promising new technology - voice recognition - is unlikely to replace the keyboard soon.

And where engineers bickered for years over where to place a certain key, designers now are looking at ways to change the shape of the board itself for the health and comfort of computer users.

The letters on the QWERTY keyboard, named for the keys in the upper left corner, have stubbornly stayed where Christopher Sholes and Carlos Glidden put them to slow down crack typists and keep from jamming the keys of the Remington and Sons typewriter in 1873. But new keys added in the past 15 years to make computers more than just typewriters have wandered about the periphery, with touch typists in furious pursuit.

For example, where do you find the backslash key, which is crucial for telling an IBM-compatible computer how to find a file stored in a disk directory. Look at two supposedly standard keyboards. The backslash is below the Delete Backspace key on one and to the left of it on another.

The "control" and "caps lock" keys have hopped about, too, helping defeat even the swiftist touch typists, who are taught never to look at their keyboards.

The major manufacturers say the struggle for position is just about over, at least on full-size machines designed for the desktop.

But on another front, there are people who want to redesign the keyboard or do away with it altogether because they blame the board for a tremendous increase in the number of reports of a painful condition known as repetition strain injury, or RSI, among people who type for a living.

More than 15 million people say they suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome or other sometimes disabling injuries statistically linked to heavy keyboard use. However, there is no consensus on what causes the injury or how to cure it.

"We have to be real careful about the promises we make," said Rick Thompson, who is in charge of developing a new keyboard for Microsoft, the software manufacturer. "You mention a product that might be helpful to people with RSI, and they'll follow you off a cliff to try it. But RSI is a cumulative disorder, and nobody is instantly cured."

Nevertheless, Microsoft is preparing to jump into the market with a new board that would separate the hands and reduce the load on the muscles considered most likely to lead to RSI.

Apple Computer, which started out with a smaller, simpler keyboard design that proved popular with children, introduced an adjustable version last year hinged at the top to enable people to change the angle of their elbows and wrists, which are considered stress points for typists. However, many of those who buy the keyboards report a tendency to gravitate to the traditional placement.

Lexmark, which makes keyboards for IBM, is about to announce a model that can be adjusted in several ways.

A company called Infogrip has taken a more radical approach, offering a seven-key pad that makes letters with combinations of keystrokes like a court stenographer or a pianist playing chords.

Other innovations use separate, sloping sides for each hand, permit different sections to twist and rotate to suit the user or place the keys in individual wells, where the fingers can hit the keys with very little force.

The search for less stressful typing methods has even breathed new life into a 60-year-old keyboard layout developed by August Dvorak, an efficiency specialist who remapped the letter keys to speed up where QWERTY sought to slow down.

Linda Lewis, a Dvorak enthusiast in Seattle who teaches typing on both QWERTY and Dvorak keyboards using her own Keytime method, said the fingers of a full-time typist travel an average of 16 miles in eight hours on a QWERTY keyboard but only 1 mile using the Dvorak. That, she said, has prompted renewed interest in the Dvorak keyboard as a potential way to reduce RSI.

If you want to try it, Microsoft includes the Dvorak layout among the keyboard options it offers with current versions of DOS 6.2 and Windows 3.1. Apple includes Dvorak on some machines sold abroad but not in domestic Macs. The software can be obtained from Apple or from various online services.