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What is "The Best Keyboard Ever Made"?

MikeS said:
Well, the ALT key gets a good workout in Windows...

One of the more useful applications is to type special characters not on the keyboard (ALT + numeric keyboard ASCII value)

m
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I've always hated that. It's totally stupid to force users to memorize an ASCII list just to type special characters. There's the Character Map program (or whatever it's called), but the window doesn't stay on top and you can't redirect output to where you're typing - just copy and paste. It's totally inefficient when you're typing a letter full of accents.

The Amiga has a nice way of doing it. Pressing Alt switches the keyboard keys to the alternate characters. For accented letters, you press the accent key then the letter the accent goes on. Example: for é, you just press Alt-F for the accent, then e. If you want á, you do Alt-F then a. If you can't remember which key is the special character you want, you just bring up the Keyshow graphical keyboard.

I think many people have stopped adding accents to words like cliché and résumé just because it's such a pain in the ass to do it in most operating systems.
 
Agreed, it's not the most convenient, but for accented characters, umlauts, etc. there are the different keyboard layouts...

But there are 128 different special characters in the PC's ASCII character set after all, and without a special keyboard you'd pretty well have to look some of those up somewhere no matter what. How do you draw a text box on an amiga?

m
 
For handling European character sets, I simply set Windoze to use the "US International" keyboard layout. áçëñò etc. are just double-key combinations; to get ü, just type a double quote (") and then a u, for example. There are other specials, such as ctrl+alt+s to get German "ß". Pretty intuitive.

For other sets, such as Cyrillic, I have an alternate (phonetic) map available that I can switch to using ctrl+alt. Thus, "Дмитрий Медведев" is typed as D-m-i-t-r-i-j, etc. No fussing with character maps or alt+keypad combinations.
 
Yeah, I think keyb went ahead and used the appropriate font as well but don't quite remember. I know it changed the keyboard layout, not just the characters. But yeah I was aware of alt+keypad ascii as well as in some programs ctrl+p+letter to print the symbol (like ctrl+p (keep holding ctrl) g would give you ascii 7 for bell, etc).
 
Chuck(G) said:
For handling European character sets, I simply set Windoze to use the "US International" keyboard layout. áçëñò etc. are just double-key combinations; to get ü, just type a double quote (") and then a u, for example. There are other specials, such as ctrl+alt+s to get German "ß". Pretty intuitive.
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That sounds good, but doesn't it screw you up typing regular characters? I once tried setting my keyboard to Canadian-French, but had to switch back because I couldn't access many basic characters (and didn't feel like constantly switching layouts). I'll try "US International" the next time I use (or am forced to use) Windows.

But there are 128 different special characters in the PC's ASCII character set after all, and without a special keyboard you'd pretty well have to look some of those up somewhere no matter what.
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That's true, but the accented characters and common symbols should be easily accessed. In Windows in US layout, do you know how to do: £ ¢ ¶ ® -without looking up an ASCII code?

On Amiga, it's so simple (US layout):
Alt-l = £
Alt-4 = ¢ (Shift-4 is $, so this makes sense)
Alt-p = ¶
Alt-r = ®

I'm sure some Windows programs have features to add special characters from a window or menu, but you have to take your hands off the keyboard, move the mouse and click on them.

How do you draw a text box on an amiga?
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Do people still use characters to draw a text box? I think the last time I did that was in an MS-DOS assembler program I wrote. After the GUI came out, there's not much point to do it with text (only works with monospaced text anyway). On Amiga, you just use wordprocessors and DTP programs to draw boxes around text.


Back on topic:
So, nobody has a Victor 9000 keyboard? What about the DEC Rainbow keyboard? How does that feel?
 
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Mr.Amiga500 said:
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Do people still use characters to draw a text box? I think the last time I did that was in an MS-DOS assembler program I wrote. After the GUI came out, there's not much point to do it with text (only works with monospaced text anyway).
<snip>
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Well, the question was, "were there useful applications for the Alt key besides ctrl+alt+del and Word Perfect?..," not whether there were better ways.

m
 
Yeah, I just went off on a little rant because it was something that bugged me for years.

Back to keyboards:
Did any other makers have "clicky" models? IBM owned the patent on the buckling spring, but did any company licence that design or have their own similar clicky design? (not counting the many with audible speaker beep when pressing keys)
 
That sounds good, but doesn't it screw you up typing regular characters? I once tried setting my keyboard to Canadian-French, but had to switch back because I couldn't access many basic characters (and didn't feel like constantly switching layouts). I'll try "US International" the next time I use (or am forced to use) Windows.
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The only characters that you really have to get used to doing are the quotes (' and ") which you type by keying quote-space. It gets to be second nature after a very short time.

Did any other makers have "clicky" models? IBM owned the patent on the buckling spring, but did any company licence that design or have their own similar clicky design? (not counting the many with audible speaker beep when pressing keys)
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There is a current maker of the IBM-style clicky keyboards:

http://pckeyboards.stores.yahoo.net/keyboards.html

By the way, the alternate Cyrillic map is known as homophonic. (please, don't misread!)
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Useful--I've only heard the word used in the musical sense... FWIW, there's a similar keymap for Mac, switched by using the "Caps Lock" key, which makes a lot of sense to me. Does anyone ever use "Caps Lock" for its intended purpose?
 
Chuck(G) said:
There is a current maker of the IBM-style clicky keyboards:

http://pckeyboards.stores.yahoo.net/keyboards.html
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I know. I meant back in the 1980's. Somebody said the Tandy 1000 keyboard was "clicky". Did they licence the buckling spring design from IBM or did they have their own design? Or was it not "clicky" at all? Did anybody else make keyboards with a distinctive tactile click? (not just individual keyswitches like Alps/Cherry, but an actual clicking sound & feel)
 
Now that you mention it, although this may not count our Z-15(1?) system (Zenith Data Systems 8088) and it's keyboard makes a click sound but it is through the speaker (which I think is actually in the bottom of the keyboard, unless I'm remembering it incorrectly as a child). But I don't know if the keys would be spring loaded, I just know it makes the noise. I also *THINK* I recall some setup program to turn that option on and off (could have been in the debugger but I really don't remember that freshly).

What I remember is when playing some games like Castle where you'd have to hold down the numberpad direction key and the keyboard would make that click noise for each time it read it until the keyboard buffer filled up then it'd do system beeps and not take any additional characters. Honestly was a complete PITA since in a game like that you'd have to hold down your key for no more than 5 seconds or so and then do it again for the constant movement effect.
 
I think IBM/Lexmark was unique in the manufacture of buckling-spring keyboards. The other buckling-spring keyboards that I've seen have been rebadged IBMs.

Of course, if you want audible feedback, you can't beat an 026 keypunch. Press a key and get a big THUNK as the hole's punched...
 
Yeah but you have to admit, they're the easiest to get a nice drumbeat going so all the voices in your head and have a nice acapella session.
 
Terry Yager said:
Here I go, weighing in on another religious issue:

CLICKY KEYBOARDS SUCK!!!

I can't stand 'em...they drown out all the voices in my head!

--T
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A full-frontal lobotomy will fix those voices. You can even do it on your own with an icepick and a hammer. (but for God's sake, cover the carpet first!)
 
Mr.Amiga500 said:
A full-frontal lobotomy will fix those voices. You can even do it on your own with an icepick and a hammer. (but for God's sake, cover the carpet first!)
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Done there, been that...only I couldn't find an icepick (do they even make 'em anymore?), so I used a BIC pen instead. All that did was add some French voices to all the rest! I think the ink may have been contaminated with trace amounts of lead...

--T
 
Terry Yager said:
My voices gots no talent whatsoever.

--T
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Hmm, mine do. Except there is only one voice in my head, which is me. Somehow, it sings wonderfully, which is odd seems I plain suck. Great thing about TALKING to that voice in my head? It actually gives me someone to talk to who is a great listener AND has a powerful mind for very good and well-supported arguements.

And so the crazy side takes one more step out my mouth--wait...fingers?

--Jack
 
Yzzerdd said:
Hmm, mine do. Except there is only one voice in my head, which is me. Somehow, it sings wonderfully, which is odd seems I plain suck. Great thing about TALKING to that voice in my head? It actually gives me someone to talk to who is a great listener AND has a powerful mind for very good and well-supported arguements.

And so the crazy side takes one more step out my mouth--wait...fingers?

--Jack
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Mebbe it's because I have absolutely no imagination. Hell, I even dream of ugly women...

--T
 
All this brain talk makes me think of the distant future, when keyboards at all may obsoleted and computers become assistents to the brain, probably interconnected wirelessly at private frequencies. Maybe it is sci-fi, but part of the technology is there already today for disabled people. To run a computer with a keyboard will be sooo 20th century, almost as outdated as we might think it is to hit two stones to get a spark and start a fire.
 
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