Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!isishq!doug
From: doug@isishq.FIDONET.ORG (Doug Thompson)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: Alternative Keyboards
Message-ID: <1282.23DA0399@isishq.FIDONET.ORG>
Date: 21 Jan 89 22:37:34 GMT
Organization: International Student Information Service -- Headquarters
Lines: 54


 
 jd>From: jeffd@ficc.uu.net (jeff daiell) 
 
 jd>> back to qwerty. 
 jd> 
 jd>Two possible solutions here.  One would be a keyboard that translated 
 jd>one's Dvorak keying into qwerty for the computer's benefit.  
 jd>The other would be a program that would let the computer accept either. 
 jd>  
 jd> 
 jd>As stated earlier, if someone wants to provide the funding, I'll 
 jd>provide the PR.  Is there also someone to provide the programming/ 
 jd>engineering?  Let get rich! 
 jd> 
 jd> 
 jd>Jeff Daiell 
 
Either solution is simple within a given hardware/OS environment. 
There are some "standards" in the industry, but there are so many of 
them that the challenge would come from the size of the number of 
different keyboard/OS solutions one would have to come up with to 
enable Dvorak fluency to be generally usable. 
 
I'd switch to Dvorak, and have even though about doing it within the 
company. But then every time some "foreign" machine comes along, it's 
back to qwerty . . .  
 
So there is a long lead time before one could offer a "switcher" 
genuinely accessible compatibility with all the hardware s/he's liable 
to have to be able to use. 
 
There are so *many* keyboards in our workplaces and homes, 
typeweriters of all kinds, computers of numerous kinds, terminals, 
TELEX machines, etc.  
 
The technique of converting any one is pretty straightforward, and if 
it's a computer, as easy as "when user types "A", record "B" instead. 
But this has to work with all kinds of software for which we are never 
going to see the source code on zillions of different computers . . . 
Therein lies the problem. 
 
=Doug 
 


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