@sunic.sunet.se:lmag@amuz2 (Lars Magnusson - AMUZ ) (04/27/91)
A lot of noice have been on the net the past days, concerning
the new HP 95LX. As an old HP 75C (No 000783 [1982]), I'm pleased
that Corvallis still can cook up some nice things, but as with
the 75/72-series I can see that they are not following through on
their ideas. Then (as the material from HP Sweden show, also now
and has been noted her) Corvallis blundered on the display.
A 40x16 display is nearly as bad as the 32 char displays on
the 70-series computers. Poquet has already shown that 80x24
is possible. Maybe Bill Faus or Everett Kasen can give the
motivation to the display size.
Another thing that a lot of 41/70-series users are missing from
HP today are the nice HPIL-interfaces. HP, if you had continued
with that, the life had been a lot easier. There was even a reasonable
diskdrive to that interface. Made a UNIX-lookalike shell to my
75 in -83, and had an opportunity to test it with the disk. Even
with the prices then, it was the poor mans UNIX (nearly). Or why
not use the old tapestation, it's not that bad. Tape as portable
backup and disk at home, kind of like it.
So, Bill and Everett, why not revive the HPIL. It would be a great
thing to have on my PC at work, instead of all those inch-thick
rs232-cables. You got the HPIB to be a IEEE standard.
And when you are at at it, designing the HP 97SX (sounds right in an
old HP-fan's ears, the 9730 was for it's time, a doll), increase
the size of it so we scandinavians (and others) can get our aa,
ae and oe chars keys. At the 70-series Corvallis blundered to 100 %
since the aa (a with a ring above) didn't even exist as a blue
key char. The world does not end at Maine coast line, you know.
Bye the way, since Corvallis are going netmail, why not fix uupc in
the rom.
To end it, the HP 95 is in the right direction not only for for
the finance-world, but for all old 60/70/80-lovers, this is what
many of us in PPC and CHUUG longed for in the biggining of the 80-ies.
As someone noted, 40-series-emulator would be nice, but also for
the 70-series. Think of running the Basic and the Forth, and maybe
a tool to migrate the ViciCalc-files to Lotus ?
By the way, is there any archive-site on the net that carries the
PPC/CHUUG 75-material published around -83 to now?
(please mail answers on this last one)
====================================================================
Lars Magnusson ! (EU)Net : lmag@z.amu.se
Dept. of Computing ! Kom : s1039 (s1039@heron.QZ.se)
AMU Jamtland ! Teleph.: int. +46 63 14 56 00
Box 603 ! Fax : int. +46 63 12 33 42
S-832 01 Froson (Ostersund) ! MEMO : VOL.VD.MAILER
Sweden ! (On first line: To: lmag@z.amu.se)
(Ostersund - Candidate for Winter Olympics 1998)
====================================================================everett@hpcvra.cv.hp.com. (Everett Kaser) (04/30/91)
Lars Magnusson writes... > HP 95LX.... > Corvallis blundered on the display. >A 40x16 display is nearly as bad as the 32 char displays on >the 70-series computers. Poquet has already shown that 80x24 >is possible. The 40x16 display was chosen for readability, price, and what will fit into the 95 package. Yes, Poquet has the 80x24 display, but if you put the pack- ages side by side, you will quickly notice that the Poquet machine is MUCH larger (you'd have to have a pretty large hand to consider it a "handheld"). Additionally, all of the built in software is designed to work well with the 40x16 display, with the user rarely even seeing the DOS prompt. Size of the package and readability of the display were considered more important. (Remember, this is a technical forum, where most of the user's who are familiar with DOS or (gasp) Unix aren't particularly worried by the naked prompt. This isn't necessarily true of the general market for this type of machine.) >Another thing that a lot of 41/70-series users are missing from >HP today are the nice HPIL-interfaces. HP, if you had continued I was not involved with calculators at the time that the decision was made to go away from HPIL, towards serial and I/R interfaces, but it's clear that the decision has been made and is not likely to change. Serial provides a much more common interface (particularly here, since this is a "PC type" product), and in a package this size, there isn't room for both serial and HPIL (the HPIL connectors take up a lot of real estate, not to mention the electronics). > increase >the size of it so we scandinavians (and others) can get our aa, >ae and oe chars keys. At the 70-series Corvallis blundered to 100 % >since the aa (a with a ring above) didn't even exist as a blue >key char. The world does not end at Maine coast line, you know. >Lars Magnusson ! (EU)Net : lmag@z.amu.se >Dept. of Computing ! Kom : s1039 (s1039@heron.QZ.se) >AMU Jamtland ! Teleph.: int. +46 63 14 56 00 The 95LX has a CHAR key, which gives you two-keystroke access to all of these "accented/double" characters. First the CHAR key is pressed, then an alpha key. The "international" versions of the 95LX have these characters printed on the overlay, to make it easy to find them. Everett -------------------------------------------------------------------------- The above opinions and information are mine and do not reflect any stance (official or otherwise) of Hewlett-Packard Company. Everett Kaser Hewlett-Packard Company ...hplabs!hp-pcd!everett work: (503) 750-3569 Corvallis, Oregon everett%hpcvra@hplabs.hp.com home: (503) 928-5259 Albany, Oregon
Lars Magnusson <s1039@heron.qz.se> (05/02/91)
In article <everett@hpcvra.cv.hp.com.> you write: >Lars Magnusson writes... >> HP 95LX.... ...... >>the size of it so we scandinavians (and others) can get our aa, >>ae and oe chars keys. At the 70-series Corvallis blundered to 100 % >>since the aa (a with a ring above) didn't even exist as a blue >>key char. The world does not end at Maine coast line, you know. .... >The 95LX has a CHAR key, which gives you two-keystroke access to all of these >"accented/double" characters. First the CHAR key is pressed, then an alpha >key. The "international" versions of the 95LX have these characters >printed on the overlay, to make it easy to find them. > >Everett >-------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Maybe we northen europeans ar a bit backwards, but we dont want out umlaut-char at a to-stroke, we want it as one-strokers, at least the lower case, they are used so often in the language that even at non- touchtyping to-strokers are a negative thing. It's time that the US makers realises this fact. Ask Zortech what happened in Europe, when the first update of their C++ was distributed as US 7-bit ascii. Not even Your peers, the English could print out their pound sign. That Zortech survived that, is probably due to that they are an european company, migrated to US (not counting Walther Bright). Europe are to consitute for ca 40 % of the US companies future revenues, and US about 30 % according to some surveys. I'm not negative to Corvallis, I likes your products, but there sometimes missing that little edge, thats burns out the competition, and the screen the umlaut chars are typical of those. See my critisism as constructive. My old 32 and 75 have been used for calculating well-loggs for the swedish nuclear desposal program, and did it better than my boss's methods. The 75 where not a true handheld, according to the present HP definition. Would have ruined my clothes if I tried, BUT touchtyping (with my old miner hands at least) was possible, that the size where in large right. The problem where that making a wordprocessor, running in Basic - able to translate the right keys to swedish chars, slowed touchspeed down a bit. And the 32 char display gave some problems. 75 size with a foldup 80x24 display, some readjustments concerning the keyboard for the umlauts and the rs232 on the loop (have a parallel to day) that o'l bird would do 40 % of my job today, had even a simulation of my older 32, minus programmingcapabilty, running at a switch key. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lars Magnusson ! EUNET : lmag@z.amu.se Dept. of Computing ! KOM : s1039 (s1039@heron.QZ.SE) AMU Jamtland ! Tel : + 46 63 14 56 00 Box 603 ! Fax : + 46 63 12 33 42 832 01 Froson (Ostersund) ! Sweden ! (Ostersund - candidate for Winter Olympics 1998) ==========================================================================
everett@hpcvra.cv.hp.com. (Everett Kaser) (05/03/91)
I'd like to precede the following note with this comment: discussions of
keyboards and keyboard layouts are ALWAYS religious issues and are ALWAYS
settled by decree. Kaser's law of keyboard satisfaction goes something
like this: If n people will be using a product (which has a keyboard), at
LEAST sqrt(n) different keyboards would be required to totally satisfy
EVERYONE. 1/2 :-). With that out of the way:
Here's a (very crude, very quick) keyboard layout for the HP 95LX. What
keys will you give up for "localized" keys? The obvious ones that you'll
mention are the two () keys and the @ key. The ()'s are primary because of
their heavy use in the calculator, and @ is primary for its use in 1-2-3.
ESC TAB F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 F7 F8 F9 F10 upcur ON
FILER COMM APPT PHONE MEMO 123 CALC ( ) BKSPC DEL lfcur dncur rtcur
Q W E R T Y U I O P 7 8 9 /
A S D F G H J K L 4 5 6 *
CTRL Z X C V B N M --ENTER-- 1 2 3 -
SHIFT ALT CHAR -S-P-A-C-E- , @ MENU SHIFT 0 . = +
Now, remember that ANY function you take off of a primary key HAS to be
moved SOMEWHERE, and there's NO room for more physical keys on the keyboard,
and EVERY key already has a shifted function (except CTRL, SHIFT, ALT, CHAR
SPACE, COMMA, and @). I can envision @ being placed on SHIFT-COMMA maybe (or
perhaps some other scrambling) and that would free up *ONE* physical key for
"localized" characters.
So, two questions:
1) what "extra" characters do you need as primary keys?
2) where are you going to put them?
Remember that SHIFT-somekey doesn't buy you anymore than CHAR-somekey. It's
still a two-keystroke action. (I'm not trying to be cute/facecious/antigonistic
here, I'm really interested in the information from #1 and the suggestions
from #2). Also, remember that you can't grow the keyboard in order to add
more physical keys. One of the primary attributes of this machine is it's
size, and growing the size by any amount is less than desirable.
Everett Kaser Hewlett-Packard Company
...hplabs!hp-pcd!everett work: (503) 750-3569 Corvallis, Oregon
everett%hpcvra@hplabs.hp.com home: (503) 928-5259 Albany, Oregonbson@rice-chex.ai.mit.edu (Jan Brittenson) (05/04/91)
In a posting of [2 May 91 22:05:14 GMT] everett@hpcvra.cv.hp.com. (Everett Kaser) writes: > Here's a (very crude, very quick) keyboard layout for the HP 95LX. > What keys will you give up for "localized" keys? On a normal 80 key or so qwerty keyboard the brackets, grave accent, and tilde are usually given up, and the caps repositioned to follow a suitable national standard (available on request from ISO as well as national standardization organizations). From your layout it seems there are too few keys to do this properly on the HP-95. Which would have passed on the European market 5 years ago. I don't own stock in HP or anything, so I really don't care, but I predict you will have considerable problems getting the HP-95 into the European market without reworking the keyboard. What would you do if you, in order to type Y, A, E, D, and Z, had to either: 1. Press 2-key combinations 2. Give up ( ) @ (which is usually given up anyway) and another two keys. Like I mentioned above, this would have passed 5 years ago. But not today. Five years ago Europeans would have been content with "entering characters." Today they expect to be able to "type." (Perhaps not touchtype, but still type.) Anyway, I don't know what you CV guys have in store. Perhaps a redesigned European model? -- Jan Brittenson bson@ai.mit.edu
tt@euler.jyu.fi (Tapani Tarvainen) (05/06/91)
In article <25590156@hpcvra.cv.hp.com.> everett@hpcvra.cv.hp.com. (Everett Kaser) writes: > ESC TAB F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 F7 F8 F9 F10 upcur ON >FILER COMM APPT PHONE MEMO 123 CALC ( ) BKSPC DEL lfcur dncur rtcur > Q W E R T Y U I O P 7 8 9 / > A S D F G H J K L 4 5 6 * > CTRL Z X C V B N M --ENTER-- 1 2 3 - > SHIFT ALT CHAR -S-P-A-C-E- , @ MENU SHIFT 0 . = + >1) what "extra" characters do you need as primary keys? Most European languages need at least two more letters (statistics, anyone?). Finnish needs two, Swedish and German three, Danish and Norwegian (I think) also three, French could probably do with the accents in separate keys (three?), ditto spanish (two?), &c. >2) where are you going to put them? The first thing I'd do is moving >FILER COMM APPT PHONE MEMO 123 CALC to CHAR-something (function keys perhaps). They aren't often needed in a rapid sequence, I think, and most languages (the ones I need, anyway :-) could be satisfied with seven extra keys. -- Tapani Tarvainen (tarvaine@jyu.fi, tarvainen@finjyu.bitnet)
keld@login.dkuug.dk (Keld J|rn Simonsen) (05/07/91)
s1039@heron.qz.se (Lars Magnusson) writes: >>>the size of it so we scandinavians (and others) can get our aa, >>>ae and oe chars keys. At the 70-series Corvallis blundered to 100 % >>>since the aa (a with a ring above) didn't even exist as a blue >>>key char. The world does not end at Maine coast line, you know. >.... >>The 95LX has a CHAR key, which gives you two-keystroke access to all of these >>"accented/double" characters. First the CHAR key is pressed, then an alpha >>key. The "international" versions of the 95LX have these characters >>printed on the overlay, to make it easy to find them. >> >>Everett I think you miss some competition edge, then. Scandinavians are used to have their national letters easily accessible (one key for lower case - shift+one key for uppercase) Even my small Atari portfolio has got that, and all PCs and Macs sold in this country. My portfolio also speaks Danish on all dos commands and portfolio hotkeys, this is equivalent to common PC DOS behaviour. Keld Simonsen