Setting up board with the keyboard

Years ago I wrote a quick little tool that let the user navigate a board with the arrow keys and place pieces by using FEN representation for each piece (k,K,q,Q, etc.)  I did this because it was a much quicker way to set up positions than using the mouse in Fritz 8 (I said years).  That tool is long gone and I'm again wanting to set up board positions quickly.  Do any of the chess board games out there, free or commercial, enable using the keyboard for setting up positions? I know that I can manually type FEN strings and paste them in but that tends to be error-prone.  I want to enter puzzles from books into my computer but doing it with the mouse makes my hands hurt just thinking about it.  Any suggestions? 

I would love a utility to allow one to put a printed page in front of the computer's camera/webcam and have the board position automatically set up in the program via clever image processing/recognition. (Or to do the same with a board on-screen.) It shouldn't be that difficult with today's technology.