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Old 08-02-2010, 11:10 PM   #14
nebcanuck
Kobo user
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Posts: 11
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Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: Peterborough, Ontario
Device: Kobo
The algorithm is an interesting thought experiment, but I think perhaps a little unintuitive?

I think it could be pretty straightforward to make the Kobo work with selecting. Pressing the centre of the navigation pad to get the menu is a redundant function. Scrap that functionality and have a central press while reading an ebook activate a box that grabs the top left-most word (reversible for right-to-left languages if the Kobo even supports those). Pressing again will fix the word you are on and then pressing left and right will select the word(s) in that direction. If you decide you don't want to do anything with it partway through, pressing any other button or pressing and holding the centre for three seconds would make it disappear.

The only question mark is how to activate features. My inclination is that if it is a single word, the dictionary comes up, whereas if it is a sentence the reading comes up. If that doesn't work, perhaps up and down can serve as distinct functions while selecting words, or perhaps pressing menu will give case-specific options.

Obviously no interface using a single d-pad is going to be completely intuitive. But I think that would be a lot easier to explain than multi-key presses, and it really isn't necessary to have the centre of the navigation pad serve as a menu launcher since everywhere else its function is to activate something.
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