Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!hplabs!hpda!hptsug2!taylor
From: amossb@umbio.Miami.Edu (A.E. Mossberg)
Newsgroups: comp.society
Subject: Re: Touch tone interfaces
Message-ID: <450@hptsug2.HP.COM>
Date: 23 Aug 88 18:27:45 GMT
Sender: taylor@hptsug2.HP.COM
Organization: University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL
Lines: 12
Approved: taylor@hplabs

Robert, if manufacturers of switchable tone/pulse phones do not provide 
the '*' and '#' keys then you should be complaining to them.  Those keys 
all along were designed for use as special-function keys.  

For a dial-up service that accepts DTMF input, if you have input fields 
of unknown length it is very hard to implement without a delimiter that 
won't be confused as data.  (It can be done with a time-out, but then you 
might as well call a human)  

Also, some systems provide for alpha input, which is rather difficult 
without a method of desginating which of the 3 chars on a key you want.

aem