Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!pinocchio.encore.com!bzs
From: bzs@pinocchio.encore.com (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Alternative Keyboards
Message-ID: <8901251606.AA16241@pinocchio.UUCP>
Date: 25 Jan 89 16:06:05 GMT
References: <400012@hpdsla.HP.COM>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 26


>This has been talked about before and I've usually been hesitant about the
>idea.  The advantage would be that I can transform the keyboard into the 
>format I am familiar with (assuming the physical layout of keys is identical 
>[size of keys and general location]).  But if the keys below my fingers can 
>change function depending on the context and I have to look at the keytops to 
>figure out which keys to hit, then it destroys my touch-typing and I'd
>rather write things longhand with some handwriting recognition software (I
>haven't experimented with this, but I'm pretty sure writing by hand would
>be faster than hunting-and-pecking on a keyboard).  
>
>Gary Ericson - Hewlett-Packard, Workstation Technology Division

I think the idea is that once set up you'd frequently use particular
configurations and get used to it.

Two obvious applications would be the ability for applications to load
function key displays and foreign character sets (in the latter case I
can't really think of any other acceptable approach for mixed language
input where the typist is fluent at typing both languages, esp. where
every char is different like cyrillic or arabic.)

Even for QWERTY v DVORAK I doubt you'd switch back and forth very
often.

	-Barry Shein, ||Encore||