Universal keyboards (was: RE: Terminal Graphics Proposal)

From: Alain LaBont\i\ (alb@sct.gouv.qc.ca)
Date: Sat Oct 17 1998 - 22:30:14 EDT


A 02:34 98-10-17 -0700, Jonathan Rosenne a écrit :
>I don't consider terminal emulation to include setup modes and debugging
>modes. Terminal emulation means, in my thinking, representing the data and
>to a limited extent the keyboard. The keyboard should not be fully emulated
>because the users want it no to be - they usually want the keyboard to
>behave like in other current applications, not like it used to be on
>hardware that went out of use long ago.

[Alain] :
This is well said. You should join our keyboard standards group!

In fact Bernard Chauvois (France) long ago wanted to standardize a keyboard
which you could move from platform to platform (a portable keyboard), from
a PC to a Mac to an IBM3270 to a Sun terminal and back... this is certainly
desired by handicaped people, but to a certain extent the desire shows up
how badly it has gone with incompatibilities from a user point of view. The
"alphanumeric" keyboard may well be geomertically standardized (and this
was done with pain internationally and also locally in many countries) but
there is a long way to go until we come to a universal interface from the
point of view of universal controls and... even electrical and logical
low-level interfaces, all this to serve one and only goal, a universal
interface from the user point of view, the one who currently really
suffers, still.

Alain LaBonté
Tel Aviv



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