[9fans] arrow keys

[9fans] arrow keys

[Chris]

| I believe that NCD used to sell a keyboard known as the
| ``programmer's keyboard'' (not sure if that was it's actual
| name or just what John liked to call it).

 This is probably the NCD Unix keyboard, which as far as I know they
will still sell you. This is a PS/2 PClone keyboard, but apparently uses
a scancode set that is both the most logical and the most obscure, and
is thus not necessarily widely supported on PClones (it is useable on
SGI workstations and possibly other vendors who use PS/2 keyboards).

 I don't know enough about the PClone keyboard interface to say
whether it would be possibly to program Plan 9 to talk to it if
the motherboard wasn't cooperating.

 It's pretty compact, has all the keys in the sane places (including
ESC, control, and capslock), but still has a numeric keypad with the
usual set of stuff and squeezes the arrow keys in at the lower right
of the regular keys. I think it has a nice feel (it's my favorite
keyboard) but other people may disagree.

 People with X and the xkeycaps program can use that to see a
picture of its layout; the actual type is the NCD N-97.

	- cks

[9fans] arrow keys

[Roger]

i was interested to discover that the default bindings
in the Inferno text widget do support cursor movement by key presses...

but the cursor keys don't generate those control characters.

maybe there's a message in there somewhere.

  rog.

[9fans] Arrow keys

[Bill]

In article <199709101828.UAA00724@foible.proxima.alt.za>, lucio@proxima.alt.ZA (Lucio de Re) writes:
|> > Turning the mouse off during quiet times is an old idea.
|> > One design is to turn it off when a key is struck, and turn
|> > it on again when the mouse is touched.
|> > 
|> At the risk of sounding even sillier than usual, why is this not done 
|> anywhere?  

It is.  Linux outside of the X interface does this precisely.
I guess they did get at least one thing right.

bill

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
bill@cs.uofs.edu         |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>   

[9fans] arrow keys

[geoff]

we called lexmark in april and they had sold the keyboard
business to unicomp in kentucky,  lex.infi.net!unicomp.
unicomp then had enough parts left to make 50 keyboards.
we ordered 20, so there could be parts for 30 left.
the part number is 92G7458 if you want to try.

[9fans] arrow keys

[Mike]

The Behavioral Technologies BTC-5100 keyboard also has
a small footprint.  I think it's about 12"x6".  I've got
one, although I have since switched to a Kinesis ergnomic
keyboard, which is about 16" wide, but at least still
not burdened with one of those !#%@ keypads.

[9fans] arrow keys

[jmk]

from the old notes about the hardware we use:

	.SH
	Keyboard
	.LP
	You just can't get a decent keyboard these days.
	We use the Lexmark Quiet-Touch.
	It has 84 keys,
	an optional numeric keypad (which we've never bought)
	and either PS/2 (6-pin) or AT (5-pin) connector.
	The feel is a bit dull,
	but it measures 13"x6" which makes up for a lot.

it has arrow keys.

[9fans] arrow keys

[David]

> a pox on the things.  give me back my desk space.

I saw a nice keyboard in Fry's which didn't have numb-pad
or arrow keys.  It did have a row of function keys though,
but even so, it was pretty compact compared to the Sun
monstrosity in front of me right now.  And it was black...

I believe that NCD used to sell a keyboard known as the
``programmer's keyboard'' (not sure if that was it's actual
name or just what John liked to call it).  It was also very
compact, although it wasn't black.  I think it might even
be PC compatible (at least electrically, if not keycode
compatible).

Actually, one or both of these may have had arrow keys, but
if they did, they weren't taking up as much space as they
do on the standard 104 key keyboards.

[9fans] Arrow keys

[Lucio]

> Turning the mouse off during quiet times is an old idea.
> One design is to turn it off when a key is struck, and turn
> it on again when the mouse is touched.
> 
At the risk of sounding even sillier than usual, why is this not done 
anywhere?  The idea of waiting for a keypress sounds good, although a 
period of inactivity may be better for idiot utilities such as the 
Win'95 desktop where one spends long periods just staring at it and 
hoping that something intelligent will eventually occur :-)
-- 
Lucio de Re (lucio@proxima.alt.za)
Disclaimer: I'm working at getting my opinions to agree with me.

[9fans] Arrow keys

[Lucio]

I presume the reason arrow keys don't move the cursor around (I _do_ 
wish they did, at least in the Unix versions of SAM) is because of the 
arbitrariness of line movement.  I can't imagine the slightest reason 
for them not working horizontally at character level, and the mouse 
resolution can be such a bind...

But once one accepts the mouse as the only means to move the cursor, I 
have wondered for a while whether it would not be useful to turn the 
mouse arrow off after a brief period of inactivity, only to bring it 
back when the mouse is moved.

The rationale is as follows: a static mouse cursor only gets in the way 
of the text (or whatever) on the screen, turning it off is better than 
having to move it to an unobtrusive location.  Whereas it may initially 
be a touch disconcerting not to know where the cursor is, the eye's 
sensitivity to movement would make it easy to spot the cursor once it 
reappears (give or take some LCD displays where tracking down the 
cursor is practically impossible all the time :-(

Plan 9 (or Inferno, for that matter) may be fine place for some 
experimentation.  If Bell Labs (or anyone else who can afford to) want 
to patent the idea, I'll only demand acknowledgement, even though real 
money would be gratefully accepted :-)
-- 
Lucio de Re (lucio@proxima.alt.za)
Disclaimer: I'm working at getting my opinions to agree with me.

[9fans] Arrow keys

[rob]

Turning the mouse off during quiet times is an old idea.
One design is to turn it off when a key is struck, and turn
it on again when the mouse is touched.

-rob

[9fans] arrow keys

[forsyth]

most keyboards here have the so-called UK layout,
not the US one, and some people found that confusing.
(i prefer the US layout and just touch-type, disregarding
what the key tops show.)  i therefore added a limited kbmap
device (/sys/src/9/port/devkbmap.c) and added an interface to it
to /sys/src/9/pc/kbd.c with other changes to allow
keys to be mapped to Runes, not just one byte characters.
that way some other european language keyboards could
be handled by loading the appropriate map into /dev/kbmap.
the mapping values are written to /dev/kbmap as text,
but the actual values are keyboard dependent (eg, PC/AT vs Sun's).
if you gloss over some possible laziness in the implementation, so far so good.

the arrow keys and function keys that take up an irritating amount
of space on the overblown PC keyboard are mapped by default
to non-graphic parts of the Unicode space.  (the
particular range i chose might not be the best choice,
but it's certainly much better than attempting cute mappings
to up and down arrow mappings, for the reasons rob has already
given.)

i implemented the keyboard mapping to allow non-American
keyboard mappings to be supported, and allocating distinct values
for the various function keys was only a side-effect.
i regard the arrow keys as there only because DOS needed them,
so i've generally ignored them.  it's obvious that people used
to them have programmed their body to head for the keys
when they make a mistake (it's easy to spot if you watch them),
in much the way i instinctively reach for the mouse by long practice.
even so, i'd be reluctant to introduce much support for them.
i once experimented a little, just to be nice to a few people to whom
i grudgingly decided to be nice, but i think it was a mistake.
there were always more complications (once you
came down to it) than they claimed there would be.  the mice and
arrow keys argue too much, and the arrows were originally intended
for use on a fixed-pitch rectangular character grid.  
in many applications there are several things that could be scrolled
by touching the arrow keys (eg, lists of news articles or mail messages,
as well as the message bodies).  on some non-Plan9 systems i've
used, the interpretation of the motion keys moves with the focus,
which commonly moves with the mouse (with or without a click)!
even worse are up & down movements in things like Word that
work with proportional text.  you need the computer's knowledge
of the details of the fount to know where the cursor will end
(if you experiment you see it's essentially a function of the last mouse click).
interaction of arrow keys with the current selection nearly always
leads to the introduction of yet more rules (``oh, you shift left arrow
to extend the selection to the right and control-left-arrow to
extend the selection to the left, and alt left arrow to trim it, and ...'').

a pox on the things.  give me back my desk space.