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Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ucdavis!iris!rogers
From: rogers@iris.ucdavis.edu (Brewski Rogers)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Cursor keys
Summary: a cool idea apple had long ago
Keywords: spam,cursors,duality
Message-ID: <6080@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu>
Date: 29 Nov 89 05:51:40 GMT
Sender: uucp@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu
Reply-To: rogers@iris.ucdavis.edu (Brewski Rogers)
Organization: U.C. Davis - Department of Computer Science and ee
Lines: 26
References:


Recently, I had the opportunity to screw around with an Apple 3 for a few
hours. Yes, that's "APPLE ]|[" the old sequel to the apple 2 which
died a pitiful and ignominious death. This computer is from circa 1982,
a true computing dinosaur. Anyway, it had one feature that I would really
like to have on my own computer: pressure sensitive cursor keys.
When editing a file for example, you could push the key normally,
and scroll slowly through the file, or push the key a little harder,
and the cursor would double its speed! The cursor keys had a nice feel,
too. It was easy to select either slow or fast mode. If you pushed
normally, it felt like a normal key, bt with a bit more force, you
could feel a slight click, and the cursor went into turbo mode.
	This seems like a really useful feature to me. Even though
some people may say the mouse is all you need, there are plenty of times
when a cursor key is more appropriate for cursor movement. And
there are times for fine cursor control, and times for *speed*
	So does anybody know why no other computer has this feature?
It doesn't seem as though it would add much to the price of the keyboard,
although I don't know how reliable it would be. The apple 3 was about
seven years old, and the keys still worked great. 

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