geoff@proper.UUCP (Geoff Kuenning) (02/07/84)
While we are discussing DVORAK keyboards, has any sort of ad hoc standard evolved for the placement of special-character keys? Mr. Dvorak developed his keyboard long before the heyday of the computer, and the only layout I have seen omits many of the wierder characters such as tilde and the curly braces. If a standard layout has been developed, please post it to the net.
mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) (02/10/84)
Did you know there is an ANSI standard keyboard layout for ASCII
terminals? (I have the reference at work, it's called "for Office
Machine Keyboards" or some such thing, and is right behind X3.64
in our library's set of standards.) Not only does it exist, but it's
got to be the most brain-damaged layout I've ever seen! I've never
seen an implementation, and I can certainly understand why.
Among its other misfeatures, the keyboard has an extra key between Z
and the left hand shift key. What, you say, did the IBM PC use that
bizarre layout because of the ANSI standard? Well, not quite. The
IBM PC has \ and | on that key. The standard expects < and > to be
there. It also has [ and ] on the same key, and { and } on the same
key, which might be reasonable, except that unshifted is ] and shifted
is [ (ditto for braces). I'll try to remember to post the whole layout
tomorrow.