

Japan's "first hacker" - the man who designed the Happy Hacking keyboard. - yankcrime
http://museum.ipsj.or.jp/en/pioneer/e-wada.html

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yankcrime
Here's his homepage: <http://member.wide.ad.jp/%7Ewada/index-j.html>

Google Translate version of an interview about the board's design:
[http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&...](http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fmember.wide.ad.jp%2F%7Ewada%2Fbit.hhkbd%2Fhhkbd.html)

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athesyn
I think this is the first time Google translate returned a coherent page.

Thanks.

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TazeTSchnitzel
Google Translate is very good for French, Spanish etc. A Google Latin America
blog post that was on reddit was very readable, only about half-way through
did you realise it was machine translated.

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aidenn0
Pretty mediocre for German and typically terrible for Japanese and Korean.

In particular, German works well until it encounters a Separable Verb [1], at
which point it gets very confused. I'm guessing that Dutch and Hungarian run
into similar problems, based on the wikipedia page, but I don't speak a lick
of either of those.

[edit]

Quick example: "Er kommt sofort an" (He arrives immediately ankommen ==
arrives) Is translated by google as "He comes up immediately" as "an" can be
translated as up and kommen is "to come"; this is really basic stuff and comes
up all the time. It is great whenever separable verbs don't come up but I have
never seen it translate a separable verb correctly.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separable_verb>

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athesyn
I speak dutch and from my experience it can't get any more accurate. But of
course since it's machine translated it tends to be extremely literal, and
some context is mistranslated at times.

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danieldk
I used a happy hacking keyboard for years, and I absolutely loved it. It was
small, allowing me to keep the mouse close by and had all the keys in the
right places.

At some point in time I got an Apple keyboard, which has about the same size
and flatter keys. In the beginning I hated the flat keys, but now that I got
used to it, I absolutely love it.

Did anyone read the literature with respect to high/flat keys? What is the
verdict with respect to ergonomics?

Did anyone recently purchase a Happy Hacking Keyboard? How is the build
quality these days?

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yankcrime
Depends which version you're talking about. The 'regular', non-pro HHKB is not
a quality item and uses very cheap keyswitches. The HHKB Pro / Pro 2 uses the
highly-regarded Topre keyswitches but this is reflected in the price. The
layout differs slightly, too.

I own two HHKB Pro 2's and absolutely love them. The quality of the
keyswitches is pretty much legendary by now, the build of the keyboard itself
is decent enough but nothing to write home about. It's really all about the
layout and the Topre switches.

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jrockway
Actually, the ABS construction _is_ something to write home about. It is quite
solid and very easy to disassemble for thorough cleaning.

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cicloid
I am on the market for a HHKB Pro and still wondering if there is something
like that but with bluetooth, that would absolutely make me go run to buy it.

As an Apple Keyboard user, does the HHKB feel different in a good way? It has
been eons since the last time I used a mechanical user but somehow I want to
have one since some months ago.

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workingbrains
Good article

