aglew@ccvaxa.UUCP (05/20/86)
While we're on keyboards: I think that a case can be made for putting all matching brackets on adjacent keys, near to each other. The keyboards that have |---|---| | { | } | | [ | ] | |---|---| start off right, but putting < and > above , and . breaks the pattern (and, yes, there are quite a few people who use less-than and greater-than as brackets). While we're at it, where should properly formed left and right quotation marks be put, or, if not on the keyboard, how should they be generated? (no, back-quote and single quote do not always match).
guy@sun.UUCP (05/26/86)
> While we're on keyboards: I think that a case can be made for putting all > matching brackets on adjacent keys, near to each other. The keyboards that > have ("{ [", "} ]") start off right, but putting < and > above , and . > breaks the pattern... I think a case can also be made for not changing things so that people whose fingers have learned where < and > are don't have to retrain themselves. The case for moving < and > is not much stronger than the case for switching to the Dvorak keyboard, and there doesn't seem to be much motion in that direction; it would be costly to retrain everybody who touch-types. > While we're at it, where should properly formed left and right quotation > marks be put, or, if not on the keyboard, how should they be generated? > (no, back-quote and single quote do not always match). If you're referring to the ASCII "`" and "'" characters, put them where almost everybody else puts them. Put double-quote and "'" on a key to the right of ": ;", and put "~" and "`" on a key up on the top row. -- Guy Harris {ihnp4, decvax, seismo, decwrl, ...}!sun!guy guy@sun.arpa
lamy@utai.UUCP (Francois Lamy) (05/26/86)
In article <29800005@ccvaxa> aglew@ccvaxa.UUCP writes: >matching brackets on adjacent keys, near to each other. The keyboards that >... >start off right, but putting < and > above , and . breaks the pattern (and, Hmmm... , and . being adjacent on my keyboard, it follows that < and > are, too. >While we're at it, where should properly formed left and right quotation >marks be put, or, if not on the keyboard, how should they be generated? >(no, back-quote and single quote do not always match). For balanced quotation marks I would go for compose-' and compose-` (are there distinct glyphs for `` and '' in ISO latin 1?) My personal choice for French guillemets would be compose-< for << and compose-> for >>. The following layout allows for adjacency in both cases: "ascii mode" "french mode" (compose key depressed in "wp" (compose key depressed in "programming" mode) mode) --------------- --------------- |backsp |delete | |backsp |delete | | | | | | | ---------------------- ---------------------- | { | } | | | | | e" | u^ | i^ | | | [ | ] | \ | | | e^ | a^ | o^ | | ------------------ | ------------------ | | : | " | ~ | return | | : | " | u` | return | | ; | ' | ` | | | ; | e` | a` | | --------------------------------- --------------------------------- | < | > | ? | shift | lf | | << | >> | c, | shift | lf | | , | . | / | | | | , | . | e' | | | --------------------------------- --------------------------------- | control | compose | | control | compose | | | | | | | --------------------------------- --------------------------------- (The French layout is completely arbitrary, except for c, and e', which are in the same place as on a French-Canadian typewriter, if I am not mistaken) Since there is no agreement for the placement of "alien :-)" characters, I chose to put them all at the same place, where they would be easy to hunt and peck. I do not mind the three keys between "L" and return, if return is big enough to be hit with boxing gloves. This layout puts <escape> back where it belongs, left of 1, and also allows for symmetrical <control> and <compose> keys, on both side of the space bar. -- Jean-Francois Lamy CSNet: lamy@ai.toronto.csnet Department of Computer Science EAN: lamy@ai.toronto.cdn University of Toronto ARPA: lamy%ai.toronto.csnet@csnet-relay Toronto, Ontario UUCP: {ihnp4,decvax,decwrl,uw-beaver} M5S 1A4 !utcsri!utai!lamy