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From: bobr@zeus.TEK.COM (Robert Reed)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: Re: Downside and Upside
Message-ID: <1847@zeus.TEK.COM>
Date: Fri, 12-Jun-87 15:57:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: zeus.1847
Posted: Fri Jun 12 15:57:56 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 20-Jun-87 18:36:25 EDT
References: <8706111647.AA02770@hi-csc.uucp>
Reply-To: bobr@zeus.UUCP (Robert Reed)
Organization: CAE Systems Division, Tektronix Inc., Beaverton OR
Lines: 37

In article <8706111647.AA02770@hi-csc.uucp> slocum@hi-csc.UUCP (Brett Slocum) writes:

    I am not aware of any workstation that uses two cursors.  How would you
    control them?  One cursor for the mouse, and one for the arrow keys?
    And which one do you use for text input??  Two cursors seems absurd to
    me.

It is not absurd, and in fact works very well.  The classic example is from
smalltalk, and is also present on the Macintosh (and I suspect therefore,
also under GEM).  There are actually a plethora of cursors, one which is
always attached to the pointing device, and then one each alpha cursor
associated with each window.  The presence of the pointing cursor selects
the window to which keyboard input is directed, but the echo occurs at the
position of the alpha cursor.  The alpha cursor can be moved around within
any particular window THROUGH AN EXPLICIT SELECTION EVENT.  For example, a
simple selection (could be a DM command bound by default to, say, the left
button) moves the appropriate alpha cursor to the position of the pointing
cursor.  In other words, each window remembers more of what the user was
doing last.  There are some trades and balances that occur with this change,
but having used both, I find the technique described here produces a much
lower frustration level than the current DM scheme.

    I would probably spend half my time erasing extra characters, if they
    were all auto-repeat.  That's what the 'repeat' key is for.

Oh dear, are there still people around who prefer an explicit repeat key to
momentarily delayed autorepeat?  I am currently typing on a keyboard with
this latter scheme.  I have no problems with doubled keys because the normal
stroke of hitting a key produces only a single character.  However, for any
key that I want to repeat, alphanumeric, control, or otherwise, all I have
to do is hold down the key, and after a brief pause, the key starts
repeating at a manageable rate.  I don't have to go through any contortions
to reach the repeat key (which is great since there isn't any :-), and it's
a much better solution.  I thought repeat keys had died with the days of the
electromechanical teletype, until I first saw an Apollo keyboard.
-- 
Robert Reed, Tektronix CAE Systems Division, bobr@zeus.TEK