Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!rice!sun-spots-request From: jgrace@porter-square.bbn.com (Joe Grace) Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun Subject: Re: new Sun type-4 keyboards Keywords: Hardware Message-ID: <3560@kalliope.rice.edu> Date: 26 May 89 01:37:22 GMT Sender: usenet@rice.edu Organization: Sun-Spots Lines: 52 Approved: Sun-Spots@rice.edu X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 8, Issue 8, message 5 of 14 Just to make sure everyone is clear on BBN engineers's thinking on keyboards :-), I thought I would add my 2 cents. To me, there are 2 families of acceptable keyboards, neither of which corresponds to an ANSI standard or anything. Rather, they correspond to "empirical" or practical standards. The VT100 family. The older Sun keyboards fall under this category. This layout has the (IBM) Selectric typewriter arrangement of keys, with where usually is, at the top left (just above ), and or just above . The older Sun keyboards add keys to the right and left of the space bar, but typically VT100 layout keyboards have no such keys. The 'new age' or "enhanced" IBM PC keyboards. These are nicer than the VT100 family keyboards in that there are _2_ control keys and _2_ meta keys which basically become 2nd and 3rd keys. This layout promotes high speed touch typing. I don't recall where the key is on these keyboards, but I think it needs (via a PC layout program or such) to be swapped with another key to get it in its "usual" top-left location. This would be a problem except that a key exists in the "proper" location, so the situation is easily fixable in software. I just saw the new Sun keyboard today, and the biggest flaw I noticed is that they shrunk the key to squeeze in another key. OOOPS! IBM did this sort of thing with their original IBM PCs to protect their word processing DisplayWriter systems from being replaced with the less expensive line. IBM pushed not only the , but also their 2 keys out by a key. Basically, touch typists can't use the old PC keyboards. Ditto for VT220 keyboards which are similarly broken. Sun seems to be trying to kill their top of the line computers --- a little backwards even by IBM standards ;-). When the DEC salespeople demo'ed the 3100, I told them I thought the computer was "broken". Seriously, no smiley. The 2 most important parts of a computer are its screen (output interface) and its (you guessed it) keyboard. If these are broken, the computer is busted. The funny thing is, my DECcy friends tell me that DEC uses keyboards with reasonable layouts *internally* but just doesn't sell them to customers. Talk about stupid. I hope Sun doesn't make a similar mistake. Sun, please, at least offer a choice of keyboards. Thanks for listening, = Joe = Joe Grace ARPA: jgrace@bbn.com UUCP: {harvard,husc6,decvax,etc.}!bbn!jgrace