Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!agate!ucbvax!hplabs!hpda!hptsug2!taylor From: bga@raspail.UUCP (Bruce Albrecht) Newsgroups: comp.society Subject: Re: Standards, and touch tone interfaces Message-ID: <507@hptsug2.HP.COM> Date: 14 Sep 88 19:19:55 GMT Sender: taylor@hptsug2.HP.COM Organization: Control Data Corporation, Arden Hills, MN Lines: 31 Approved: taylor@hplabs > In the case of the 'touch tone' example, the '*' key was being used to end > voice input. It was not a situation where the key was being used as a > deliminer between digits, or as a 'shift' key to choose the desired meaning > of the digits. As such, wouldn't it have been just as easy to use the '0' > key in this situation? Perhaps, but if the designer is used to systems that use the '*' or '#' keys, it probably would never have occurred to use the '0'. > A few years ago when I was buying my phone, it was the ONLY pulse/tone phone > I could get for less then $75 (it's a $25 phone). This phone used the '*' > key as a 'mute' button, and the '#' key for the memory dialer. While it > could have been designed with additional buttons for these features, it > wasn't. (I've noticed the same thing in a lot of pulse/tone switchable > phones.) Should I have forked over $50 extra, just to maintain possible > compatability in the future? I've been using touch-tone entry systems (through my banks) for at least 10 years, and they've always used '*' and '#'. If you get a touch-tone phone and special options, such as call waiting or call forwarding, any special options use the '#' key. The people who designed them were expecting you to use a standard touch-tone phone, and they shouldn't be designing their systems to use only a subset, just because some phone manufacturers decided to use the 'unused' keys for something else. Would you buy a PC compatible that had a keyboard that generated different codes for ALT-, just because MS-DOS didn't use any ALT- strokes (ok, so it does, this is just an analogy)? Would you complain to software companies because your non-compatible PC didn't work with their software? I wouldn't buy a touch-tone phone that doesn't have working '*' and '#'. Or, if I did, I wouldn't use it when I knew I might need the '*' and '#'. Bruce