morrison@grads.cs.ubc.ca (Rick Morrison) (02/20/89)
Am I alone in thinking the lack of function keys on the NeXT keyboard
an appalling design decision, considering the Unix-literate academic
market the machine is apparently aimed at. This seems especially
surprising since that mecca of emacs, CMU, was supposedly consulted
in developing design specs. The idea of using gnu emacs without function
keys dampens my enthusiasm for an otherwise interesting alternative to
a SUN workstation. While we are on the topic, who came up with the
idea of the rubber tractors on the monitor? Seems to me they got
the old architectural motto "form follows function" backwards on this one.
I'd trade the cutesey feet for a swivel base any day.
Oh well, at least they didn't put spoilers on the cube. We can only hope they
didn't let the "aesthetics engineers" inside the box.
-----------------------------------------------------
Rick Morrison | {alberta,uw-beaver,uunet}!
| ubc-vision!ubc-csgrads!morrison
Dept. of Computer Science| morrison@cs.ubc.ca
Univ. of British Columbia| morrison%ubc.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa
Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1W5 | morrison@ubc.csnet (ubc-csgrads=128.189.97.20)
(604) 228-4327dorner@pequod.cso.uiuc.edu (Steve Dorner) (02/21/89)
In article <860@ubc-cs.UUCP> morrison@grads.cs.ubc.ca (Rick Morrison) writes: >Am I alone in thinking the lack of function keys on the NeXT keyboard >an appalling design decision, ... I don't know about appalling; unfortunate, maybe. Although the four mod- ifier keys (Control, Command, Shift, and Alternate) help the situation somewhat. I suspect this is an old-time-religion issue; Macs didn't have function keys until after Jobs left Apple. > The idea of using gnu emacs without function >keys dampens my enthusiasm for an otherwise interesting alternative to >a SUN workstation. Listen well, NeXT; people are very concerned about their keyboards. The keyboard is still the primary interface to a computer, and people won't buy a computer with a keyboard they don't like. For example, I would NEVER consider DEC workstations or terminals, because I simply can't live with the keyboards, and DEC does not provide alternatives. I happen to think the NeXT keyboard is ALMOST perfect. The control key is in the right place, as are the shift keys and backspace. The only real problem is the ` key, which is too important to be so far away. My suggestion is to put the ` where Esc is, move Esc up to what is now unused space, and add a row of function keys across the top while you're at it. At least offer such a board is an option. I know it would have to be bigger, but so what? >I'd trade the cutesey feet for a swivel base any day. Amen. That monitor is darn hard to move, even if you don't worry about running over keyboard, mouse, and microphone cords. And the freedom to push the monitor backwards INVITES crimping the cables in the back of the monitor. Maybe those cables could attach on TOP or BOTTOM of the monitor, instead of sticking straight out the back. -- Steve Dorner, U of Illinois Computing Services Office Internet: dorner@garcon.cso.uiuc.edu UUCP: {convex,uunet}!uiucuxc!dorner IfUMust: (217) 244-1765