Typewriters in Equestria. · 1:33pm Oct 3rd, 2013
I have seen a lot of people say that ponies would not be able to type anywhere near as fast as humans and that the typewriters we saw in the episode "Ponyville Confidential" were silly with their two oversize keys.
A two key typewriter would work fine from both a speed and mechanical standpoint. The way this would work is that each key has 8 positions(left, upper left, up, upper right, right, lower right, down, and lower left). The right side would determine which bank of keys would be selected on a manual typewriter. The left side would be which key out of said bank would be selected. Then you could hit either the left side or the right side to make an impression on the paper. The side you hit would determine how high the key was so each key would have two characters on it just like a normal manual typewriter.
This gives 8x8x2=128 choices which is pretty much the exact same as typewriters did back in the day. As for the space bar, that would be pressing a key at rest. With no key chosen it would merely advance the register to the next space rather than leaving an impression. If you had something akin to an electric typewriter you could designate left as space and right as carriage return.
While it would be a lot harder to hunt and peck on such a keyboard, the training for touch typing would be very similar to how it is with typing today. The home keys would essentially be left position with the left key and around the dial with the right and could be taught that way. Then you could have upper left be another set of 8 keys to learn on the right. In essence it lends itself to learning each bank the same way we introduce keys when learning to touch type on a standard keyboard.
With this kind of set up I see nothing that would stop a pony from typing at 60 words per minute with practice.
...I'm legitimately surprised as to how much thought you put into this
I had an easier thought: they're typing in morse.
A professional typer (according to Wikipedia) types at 50-80wpm.
There are (also according to Wikipedia) continuous wave (whatever that is) transmitters that type morse at 60wpm,
The other variable, of course, is the number of letters in the Equestrian language. Given the inherent difficulties of mouthwriting/hoofwriting, I have assumed that pegasi and earth ponies use a simplified alphabet, with only 14 characters. It's doable; Hawaiian only uses 11 letters, if I remember correctly. The point is, that would make each letter in morse one or two symbols shorter, increasing speed.