Cursor movement during text editing

Abstract

Nine participants used a full-screen computer text editor (XEDIT) with an IBM 3277 terminal to edit marked-up documents at each of three cursor speeds (3.3, 4.7, and 11.0 cm/s). These speeds occur when a user continuously holds down an arrow key to move the cursor more than one character position (i.e., in repeat or typamatic mode). Results show that cursor speed did not seem to act as a pacing device for the entire editing task. Since cursor speed is a form of system response, this finding is in contrast with the generally found positive relation between system-response time and user-response time. Participants preferred the Fast cursor speed, however. Overall, more than one-third of all keystrokes were used to move the cursor. We estimate that 9-14 percent of editing time was spent controlling and moving the cursor, regardless of cursor speed.