Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!ucbvax!MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM!wmb From: wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM (Mitch Bradley) Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: Alternative keyboards Message-ID: <9008201426.AA05359@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> Date: 18 Aug 90 16:45:47 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: Mitch Bradley Organization: The Internet Lines: 27 All this talk of alternative keyboards is a waste of time because people have been inventing better keyboards as long as there have been keyboards. None of them have made much of an impact (not even the Dvorak keyboard) because there is just too much momentum behind QWERTY. > and the Enter key, allllll the way over there is almost intolerable I use ^M in place of return/enter because it's easier to reach and because the control key is in the same place on 5 of the 6 different keyboards that I use regularly (the exception is my old Macintosh keyboard, which I detest because the control key is in the wrong place). I also use ^H for backspace/delete, for the same reason. I use EMACS-style control characters for cursor movement, because I can't touch-type arrow keys (they are too far away and inconsistently placed). The benefits of standardization are immense. Even though QWERTY is a stupid layout, at least it is consistently applied across the majority of keyboards. Would that other keys (enter, delete, backspace, punctuation) were in the same locations on all keyboards! But no, every keyboard designer thinks they have a better idea, and the net result is a million different layouts for the "extra" characters. Mitch