Re: New keyboards

[JLK@MIT-MC]

CC: (BUG LISPM) at MIT-MC, JLK at MIT-MC, RLB at MIT-MC, GLS at MIT-MC

    MOON@MIT-MC 01/04/79 03:12:01 Re: New keyboards
    Change SYMBOL back to TOP, it's less confusing.
[Why?  The whole reason for the change was that TOP was confusing?
 I don't really feel too strongly about this.  I'll see what everyone
 else thinks.]

    Should GREEK be FRONT?
[Hmm.  Should modifier keys be oriented toward the operation of the 
keyboard or toward the semantics?  The same question applies to TOP vs SYMBOL.
Oddly enough, while I like SYMBOL, I am not terrifically enthused by GREEK.]

    Change the backslash on the front of slash to integral sign.
[Some people wanted it there to have an easier way of typing it.
 I don't care too much and integral sign is ok by me.]

    The shifted frob to the left of the 1 key is a duplicate double-quote?
    Or is it diaresis?  Certainly useless to have a duplicate upper-case double-quote
[RMS wanted an alternative way to type " so as not to confuse it with '.
 Given the importance of " in LISPM toplevel, it would be nice to have
 a lowercase ", but I can't find a place for it where it could be easily
 typed.]

    Can the CTRL key really be double-width only supported on one side?
     Will that work?  Will it bump into the board supports on the case??
[The CTRL keys are 1 3/4, which MICROSWITCH claims is ok.]

    Decrease the amount of wordage on the keys, I think NETWORK ESCAPE
     would be better called NET ESC.  Too much letters can be distracting.
[Good. How about TTY ESC, SYS ESC, NET ESC.  CLR SCR could be used instead
 of CLEAR SCREEN, and CLR INPUT or CLEAR for CLEAR INPUT]

    Decide what colors the key tops will be.  Red keys lose, but 3 pastel
     colors rather than the present 2 will probably be helpful in sorting
     out all these extra keys.  Colors should be in large blocks since they
     exist to be seen out of the corners of the eyes.
[Sounds reasonable. Bright Green (a la SAIL kbds) also loses in my opinion]

    Single-quote should be slanted not straight-up (nits, nits).
[Good.]

    Change END TEXT to END.
[Ok]

    Add keys called COMMAND and MACRO.  I don't have much preference where
     these should go.  Certainly flush YES in favor of these, maybe FLUSH,
     since it's the same as QUIT, isn't it?
[Flush is used for flushing typeout (like ^S or ^W or both).  QUIT is like
 ^G.  Several people wanted a YES key to answer Yes/No questions unambiguously
 (e.g. "Do you want all your files deleted (Y or N)?" followed by typeahead
       "Yesterday I called...." - example due to GLS - admittedly its a bit
       pathological, but it is nice to make the possibility of lossage
       much smaller.
  I assume you want COMMAND for escapes like Meta-X in the editor.  My general
  philosophy was that the big operation keys should be used for operations
  which are likely to be followed by a pause in your interaction with the
  system, in contrast to functions used while editing which are likely
  to be needed in the midst of a flurry of typing.  Keys that are directly
  above the center of the keyboard are fairly typeable by touch typers
  without moving the side of their hand off the keyboard, so something like
  COMMAND might be reasonable instead of, say, CLEAR SCREEN, which could be
  moved off to the side somewhere.  What would macro be used for?]

     Don't label A-LOCK, B-LOCK, ... with those names.  Maybe leave them blank,
     or label them just A, B, C, D.
[Leaving them blank is definitely a loss, since it provides no way for documentation
to refer to them clearly.  I agree we could use better names for these, but
I am not too enthused about A,B,C...]


[I haven't heard complaints about the key layout, but rather mostly about keytops.
 Therefore I am going to go ahead and generate the specs for the keys, and try to
 finalize the keytops by tomorrow.]