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From: bson@rice-chex.ai.mit.edu (Jan Brittenson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.handhelds
Subject: Re: HP 95LX - some things are missing.
Message-ID: <15554@life.ai.mit.edu>
Date: 3 May 91 17:31:07 GMT
References: <9104271550.AA09947@amuz2.amuz2.z.amu.se> <25590156@hpcvra.cv.hp.com.>
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In a posting of [2 May 91 22:05:14 GMT]
   everett@hpcvra.cv.hp.com. (Everett Kaser) writes:

 > Here's a (very crude, very quick) keyboard layout for the HP 95LX.
 > What keys will you give up for "localized" keys?

   On a normal 80 key or so qwerty keyboard the brackets, grave
accent, and tilde are usually given up, and the caps repositioned to
follow a suitable national standard (available on request from ISO as
well as national standardization organizations). From your layout it
seems there are too few keys to do this properly on the HP-95. Which
would have passed on the European market 5 years ago. I don't own
stock in HP or anything, so I really don't care, but I predict you
will have considerable problems getting the HP-95 into the European
market without reworking the keyboard.

   What would you do if you, in order to type Y, A, E, D, and Z, had
to either:

	1. Press 2-key combinations

	2. Give up ( ) @ (which is usually given up anyway) and
	   another two keys.

   Like I mentioned above, this would have passed 5 years ago. But not
today. Five years ago Europeans would have been content with "entering
characters." Today they expect to be able to "type." (Perhaps not
touchtype, but still type.)

   Anyway, I don't know what you CV guys have in store. Perhaps a
redesigned European model?

						-- Jan Brittenson
						   bson@ai.mit.edu