The easele project concerns itself with the
development an evolution of a mechanically
simple human computer interface (HCI).
This HCI takes as its guiding principle the
fact than the idea of user friendly is better
stated as familiar.
Familiarity implies a metaphor that is in common
use by a significant body of people.
Hence the desktop, common on many desktop
computers, is a familiar model for people
who work at a desk.
Rather than pick up an existing familar
metaphor this project will focus on developing
a new metaphor which can be used widely.
At first this sounds presumptuous, but this
has happened before.
The computer mouse is such an example.
Another important example is the braille system.
This has many similarities with the
technique presented here, the combination
of two sets of three bits and mode changing.
An important aspect of this technique is
to develop an encoding for the latin characters.
The braille encoding is a strong candidate.
Note the use of mode changing characters in
braille, the <number follows> character.
This special character indicates that a number
follows and the blank character clears the
special number mode.
The technique I favor is one with echos to the
night writing system of Barbier.
Barbier's encoding was influenced by phonetics.
A phonic technique is also used in shorthand.
* fricatives = { v f th h s z sh }
* affricates = { l }
* plosive = { b c d g j k p t }
* vowels = { a e i o u }
* nasal = { m n }
* tap = { }
* approximant = { }
* punctuation = { <blank> comma period colon semicolon question exclamation }