From: "trans. (T. Onoma)" Date: 2004-12-25T14:45:51+09:00 Subject: Re: OT: Alternate Keyboards (was vi useability question) On Friday 24 December 2004 10:42 pm, Nicholas Van Weerdenburg wrote: | On Sat, 25 Dec 2004 04:16:44 +0900, trans. (T. Onoma) | | wrote: | > On Friday 24 December 2004 11:45 am, Michael W Thelen wrote: | > | I feel like making some reference to Ruby to stay on-topic, but I can't | > | think of anything to say. (Ruby rules.) | > | > How bout writting a Dvorak typing tutorial in Ruby? Then maybe I'd give | > it a go. | > | > Speaking of which (and sorry I haven't followed this thread more) there | > are a number of things I think keyboard could use to "modernize". Some | > that I've thought of: | > | > * A distinction between hyphen and minus. | > * Infinity symbol | | What are the use cases for these two points? A) So I can use hyphenated method names of course! B) Cause Infinity is just like Big. So unimaginably Big, in fact. I mean Huge ...Huger than Huge! And I want all that Big power under _my_ thumb! HA Ha ha! ;) | > * Keys for Bold/Strong, Italic/Emphasis and Underline. | | Most editing now is style based, so I'm not sure if this would offer | much benefit. How about a style key :)? Style-B, Style-I, etc. Hmm... what do you mean by style-based? My favorite way to edit is wiki-style, and I would very much like literal character forms of these. | > * A Page key instead of pgdn and pgup so combos work: | > Pg+Up (page up) | > Pg+Dn (page down) | > Pg+Home (top of page) | > Pg+x (close tab or window) | > etc. | | Ctrl seems to be mapped to do a lot of that already. The arrow keys | aren't that overloaded since they are off the main keyboard. Ctrl is application dependent mapped to shortcuts, having a very general meaning. Page is much more specific. I believe Amiga used to have Shift+Up, etc which was pretty cool, but again shift is too generic and mostly used already. | > * Change the Alt key's name to Menu. | | Sticky tape! Good thinking! :) | > * A real Alt key, allows a key to have a variat symbol | > and antoehr Shift+Alt symbol. Think C64! Plus it could be | > used to provide literal representations of certain codes | > like ESC and SPACE. | | Why is it more "real" then the current alt key? Alt is now commonly used as a menu. In Windows hitting Alt goes right to the first menu, in KDE I hit Alt+key and it opens a particular menu. Do you recall C64? I want an alt key that allows me to display odd characters like the paragraph symbol, or a square, or ellipsis, etc.. | > Anyone have other ideas? | | A lot of people it seems remap their keys. Combined with many programs | allowing key mapping, you can probably reconfigure for what you've | described. Have you done any of the above? No. I probably could get some of it to work. Other parts likely will not though :( Also no apps would really be able to take advantage of it either, since it isn't a standard. It's one thing to remap your board; its another for the new keys to be utilized. | How about a doc key? Hit Doc- and it shows all the associated | mappings and possibilities with a key. Interesting, like showing what Alt-key, Ctrl-key, Shift-key, etc do? Probably could usurp an F-key for that. Of course that requires the current running app to play nice. T.