Oh, I understand. I'm mostly treating it as an intellectual exercise -- it's an interesting idea, with some pros and cons balancing each other.
It's not actually relevant to what I'm doing -- we're focused on the *numbers*, not the letters. Under some circumstances, the user will need to type a short numeric code; the question is whether it is practical for us to allow them to type letters instead, to make it quicker. So if someone types "ad", I know that that's actually code "23" -- the main point of the poll is to check whether I can reliably count on that mapping. But the numbers are the point, so we're going to be using most of the keypad. (The codes are short, though, so I don't expect that to be a big issue.)
no subject
It's not actually relevant to what I'm doing -- we're focused on the *numbers*, not the letters. Under some circumstances, the user will need to type a short numeric code; the question is whether it is practical for us to allow them to type letters instead, to make it quicker. So if someone types "ad", I know that that's actually code "23" -- the main point of the poll is to check whether I can reliably count on that mapping. But the numbers are the point, so we're going to be using most of the keypad. (The codes are short, though, so I don't expect that to be a big issue.)