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From: bb16@prism.gatech.EDU (Scott Bostater)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Cursor keys
Message-ID: <3878@hydra.gatech.EDU>
Date: 29 Nov 89 08:11:53 GMT
References: <6080@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu> <2508@calvin.EE.CORNELL.EDU>
Reply-To: bb16@prism.gatech.EDU (Scott Bostater)
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology
Lines: 38

In article <2508@calvin.EE.CORNELL.EDU> richard@calvin.spp.cornell.edu (Richard Brittain) writes:
>In article <6080@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu> rogers@iris.ucdavis.edu (Brewski Rogers) writes:
>>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,

>I've never seen this in hardware, but I played with a Zenith 286 machine
>once that implemented something similar in the keyboard bios routines.  If
>you held a key down, you got an autorepeat after some delay time, then after
>some number of slow repeats, it switched to high gear and took off at high
>speed.  I think the hardware was pretty standard - you could do this with
>any pc type bios, but I've never heard of it anywhere else.

This isn't quite what the Apple /// did. The change in cursor speeds was a
function of how *hard* you pressed, not how long you kept the key pressed.
What it would require is a multi-level key that would have three or more
states (off, on, and really on).  It's been a while since I was "lucky"
enough to use an Apple ///, but if memory serves me right, only the cursor 
keys had this option, to get turbo speed on normal characters required
pressing both the desired key and either the open or closed apple key. 

As far as why the keyboard lasted 7+ years, its probably because it hasn't
been used much in the last 5 years :-)

Realisticly, I would imagine that its a lot easier (and cheaper) to build 
a 2 position switch than a multiple position switch. I've seen a few programs
around that allow the cursor to speed up if the key been pressed for a 
long time, but normally they go from too slow to too fast. What we really
need is some mechanism that monitors eye movement and moves the cursor to 
whatever portion of the screen we're looking at :-)  It should be able to
tell if we purposely blink our right eye or left eye or double blink both
eyes :-)
.
-- 
Scott Bostater      GTRI/RAIL/RAD   (Ga. Tech)
"My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from Him"  -Ps 62.1
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