programming with a touch screen [closed]_问答_开发者

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I have RSI and no one has been able to help me

I am considering to buy an ipad to do programming with visual studio. i would like to just tap on the screen to type instead of using a keyboard

does anyone know have experience programming using a touchscreen keyboard?

I'm not sure spending £600 + on an iPad is going to do anything other than deplete you bank balance and make your condition worse. Apple market a keyboard to go with an iPad because it is not particularly suited to be typing on for extended periods of time.

I would advise investing in a considerably cheaper ergonomic keyboard, and speaking to a doctor for practical advice on how to reduce rsi pain.

And there is the fact that I'm not sure it's even possible to use an Ipad as a remote keyboard to a Windows machine :)

I have chronic wrist and forearm pain, and the last thing I would ever do is use a touchscreen for a keyboard. Let's look at the scenarios:

You have the touchscreen in front of you. Your typing will become more uncomfortable and far less natural.
A touchscreen keyboard takes up lots of real estate, thus you can see less code at once.
Assuming you could even use an iPad for the keyboard only, you put the iPad facing upward, which is a more natural position. However, since you can't feel the keys (I assume you are a touch typist), you have to always look down. And in this scenario, if you're looking down at the keyboard, you don't see what's going on on the screen.
iPad doesn't help you keep your wrist at the right level / angle, but an ergonomic keyboard does.

You are far better off evaluating $600 worth of ergonomic keyboards, than to invest in an iPad, which probably doesn't do what you want anyway... unless you're just looking for another reason to justify buying one (I would, just to play Angry Birds HD!)

I have evaluated at least 15 different keyboards to help with my problem. I have found that the true ergonomic ones like GoldTouch are nice, but they always trash the button layout, which drives me nuts. Lame ergonomic keyboards like the ones from Kingston make my arms hurt even more -- they keep the keys in one plane but skew them to alter the general placement relative to your hands. I like the feel of Thinkpad keyboards, because the travel and force is just right. Lenovo sells the Thinkpad keyboard alone as a USB keyboard, but the feel is not identical. So my choice right now is the Microsoft Natural 4000. It just feels good to me. The problem with this keyboard is that is has the 10key section, and many ergonomic keyboards don't so you can move the mouse closer. My solution was to cut off the right side of the keyboard with a hacksaw and move my mouse closer. Works great!

Sorry for the long "answer" -- I got a little carried away because your problem is one that's very relevant to me and has caused me tons of pain over the years. You really need to find a physical keyboard that sets your body up correctly. It might take a lot of experimentation, but it will be worth it and far better than a touchscreen / onscreen keyboard.

I have tried using a touchscreen for programming and couldn't stand it. I agree with @Sam that you are better off trying to find better ways to deal with the rsi. Ergonomic keyboard is a good idea. Another good idea is switching your keyboard layout to Dvorak. I've also found that swapping mouse hands is helpful (I use the mouse left-handed at work and right-handed at home).

I think if you want to go for the programming with tablet you should go for integratation with IDE and "swype it" type text entering. This way the keyboard would know local variables, etc and you could type with either left hand or right hand as you need only one finger to type with it.

Also using two fingers on the tablet as mouse would lend easy switch between typing and using "mouse". Left/right click can be done by leaving one finger on the tablet while clicking with other. Drag&drop you would propably need to do as two fingers on tablet, click with left and leave the left finger on tablet and then raise right finger and move left finger so it could be interpreted as drag&drop.

SHIFT,ALT,CTRL and other voice commands to tablet would lend to less stress on your hands i think.

Also tablet's camera and simple hand gestures could be used as some sort of commands.

You could for example say "LOCAL VARIABLE" and the tablet would show list local variables from which you could choose from... there are lot of possibilities.

But it would be very big task to make everything work in a good manner but I think with innnovative thinking how to enter the data with touchscreen keyboard/voice recognition/gesture detection either with camera or on touchscreen could make rather good input device.

Consider going for a laser keyboard instead, they are pretty cheap (cheaper than an iPad at least). You can just then just project the keyboard.