I don't know if this is true for touch-typists, but as a self taught keyboarder I find that my hands know how to press all the keys required for most typical english words, but have the occasional difficulty hitting those keys in the right order, and I can generally feel it happen. What I need is a keyboard with a tiny buffer to facilitate a 'Transpose' key, which simply sends out a pair of backspaces followed by the previous two characters pressed, but the other way aorund.-- Mharr, Sep 13 2001 A blahginger idea -- Copy and Swap http://www.halfbake...a/Copy_20and_20SwapBecause I often mispell words like "Okmkimkmkoo" [reensure, Sep 13 2001] Spill Checker http://www.geocitie.../Lab/3550/spell.htmThe problem with letting the Spell Checker sort it out in the end... [mwburden, Sep 13 2001, last modified Oct 04 2004] It's apparently the most common typing error - good idea. It might be possible to implement at the OS level; someone else will know how better than I do.-- jabbers, Sep 13 2001 often when i have had one or two ... i temd tp typw the key next tp the onw i reall== wanted
perhaps if i move the keyboar= slightly to thw left>>-- po, Sep 13 2001 The problem with implementing things like this in the OS is that most people's OS is Windows. Ever used, eg, a wheel mouse on a range of different Windows programs, all sporting what is -apparently- the same GUI? Argh.-- Mharr, Sep 13 2001 A splendid idea - but one which was substantially included in the Amstrad PCW computers of, what, around 1988 or so. I can't quite recall the details - maybe you had to place the cursor between the two letters and hit the transpose button (whatever it was called)? Definitely not possible for my 3" floppy diskette to recall any more details...-- snagger, Sep 13 2001 I suspect that anyone who types with more than one finger has the same experience. You've got to develop some mental toughness to deal with this problem. Just plough on with your typing, regardless of mistakes, and let your spell checker sort it all out at the end.-- DrBob, Sep 13 2001 *BLAM* *BLAM* *BLAM*
Goodnight, Clippy.-- phoenix, Sep 13 2001 Rely, UB? No. Use? 'fraid so. A shattered UnaBubba. That's a hell of a lot of pieces for someone to clear up.-- DrBob, Sep 14 2001 Baked in EMACS. Ctrl-t swaps the two letters to the right of the cursor. It's one of the only two EMACS features that I miss. (The other is coordination with compilers about error locations.)-- td, Sep 14 2001 It's the difference between the computer doing what it thinks you want, and a better way of telling it what you want. For the most part, I'm fairly confident that my computers don't know better than me.
The actual implementation would have to be an application-level thing. In some contexts, such as games, the concept of transposing characters has no meaning.
Thinking more about it, I could probably come up with a fairly horrible hack for Windows that would probably work in most applications, but by no means in all. It may be possible to provide even uglier things for specific applications (particularly Word etc.) I'm not convinced it'd be worth the pain and suffering that my implementation would cause (especially to me) but it's still a good idea.-- lobster, Sep 15 2001 As [td] points out, this has been in emacs for decades. Very useful once you get in the habit of using it. Many programs other than emacs have adopted emacs-style editing keys (many shells, for example, and a number of GUI toolkits will obey emacs keystrokes when you're editing a text field), often including the 'transpose' key.-- wiml, Sep 15 2001 Sorta baked in vi, exceptionally well-baked in PC-Write (my favorite editor, even though it's over a decade old).
In vi, typing "xp" will delete the character at the cursor and then insert it following the cursor, with the cursor ending up on the latter character.
In PC-Write, shift-Esc will swap the character at the cursor with the one following, leaving the cursor on the later character so repeated presses will "bubble" the character at the cursor toward the end of the line. shift-Backspace goes in the other direction.-- supercat, Apr 25 2002 Baked in As-U-Type (http://www.asutype.com) for Windows (all versions). The software does just that and a bit more...-- vanhp, Dec 30 2002 Baked as AutoCorrect in Microsoft Office, which when configured right works even better than what you describe. You don't have to hit the transpose key, it just does the correction for you. Pick "Tools, AutoCorrect..." from the main menu bar in Word and Excel.-- krelnik, Jan 20 2003 random, halfbakery