Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!psuvm!uh2 From: UH2@psuvm.psu.edu (Lee Sailer) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech Subject: Re: Reading the keyboard without a window. Message-ID: <90054.113615UH2@psuvm.psu.edu> Date: 23 Feb 90 16:36:15 GMT References: <6675@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu> <1990Feb9.150945.29787@santra.uucp> <131583@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <1990Feb13.140718.26883@santra.uucp> Organization: Penn State University Lines: 39 >But, if you can get your [hands] on the 1.3 RKM's (Includes >& Autodocs and Libraries & Devices, especially) > then DO SO. The 1.3 RKM's were VERY >well done, and "worth their weight in gold". Which brings to mind a couple of suggestions for Commodore and the Amiga community.... In the Mac's early days, didn't Apple actively *encourage* that people make copies of the manuals? (Weren't they called Inside Macintosh? I remember that in 1985 it seemed like *every* freshman at CMU had a copy 8-). It seems to me that it would be to Commodore's advantage (fewer Gurus == better rep- uatation) to flood the programming community with the RKM's. For example, Commodore could subsidize Lattice, Manx, and the other language vendors so that they could include the RKM's in their compiler docs. (That way, even I'd have a copy 8-) A second idea is for americans to look for opportunities in Europe. It is pretty clear that a lot of talented programmers are working on Amiga software and that there English is probably better than mine. But do American publishers distribute the RKM's, Rob Peck's book, Mortimer's books, and so on in Europe? And, for real impact, who is translating the RKM's into French, German, Finnish, Dutch, and Russian? I imagine a scenario where one of the European Amiga wizards with good English and an American (with good English) are brought together by Commodore to translate for a few months, and get paid. In fact, hire a consultant from the Summer Linguistics Institute, too, to make sure that the subsequent translations can be done with high efficiency. Here's a scary thought. The German edition of the RKM's is more up to date, includes better examples, and thus becomes required reading for the American Amiga community. In 1995, the Germans complain that the Americans always seem to write for the obsolete 1.3 version of the OS, because they cannot read but one obsolete language. See you all after 1992 8-) 8-) 8-) lee