Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!turnkey!itcorp!geoff
From: geoff@ITcorp.com (Geoff Kuenning)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: NeXT answering Machine info.
Message-ID: <1991Mar8.072819.10238@ITcorp.com>
Date: 8 Mar 91 07:28:19 GMT
References: <1991Mar4.195639.6460@news.cs.indiana.edu>
Organization: Interrupt Technology Corporation, Manhattan Beach, CA
Lines: 24

In article <1991Mar4.195639.6460@news.cs.indiana.edu>
sahayman@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Steve Hayman) writes:

> >You must be kidding.  You want a machine that can I/O CD quality sound,
> >and you want to resort to a 12-character alphabet?  

Just for all you youths out there, this is an old idea.  The
University of Michigan's MTS system had an IBM voice-response unit
about 20 years ago.  Since they didn't really have anything useful to
do with it, some clever programmer wrote a simple driver that
translated beeps into the 48 or so characters MTS needed (lowercase?
what's that?).  They used the obvious mapping -- press the key with
the letter you want, then 1, 2, or 3 to indicate which of the three.
I forget what they did about the missing letters and the special
characters, but I know they handled them because logging on required a
dollar sign.

It was fun to play with, but what a major pain to actually do
anything!  If you're really going to make a touch-tone interface to
your NeXT, I'd strongly recommend the modern style of menus, with
escapes only when absolutely necessary.  Me, I type fast, and I'll
stick with my nice black keyboard, thank you.
-- 
	Geoff Kuenning   geoff@ITcorp.com   uunet!desint!geoff