Sun type-4 keyboard offends

[henry at utzoo.uucp]

>The specific instance of bring the Backspace key closer to the user, and
>moving Delete farther away: Delete is the UNIX default, why make life
>difficult? ...

Actually Delete is not the Unix default, as there is no single Unix
default.  Of course, if you're living entirely in the inbred little Sun
world, that's different.  I assure you, non-computer-science people find
backspace a whole lot more intuitive for the purpose.  (My own background
is in CS, but I cope with a whole lot of non-CS users here.)

>| 	The typewriter keyboard, long ago, was arranged to allow very fast
>| efficient typing.  When the capabilities of the typists surpassed the
>| technology of the typewriters, the typewriters jammed.  The manufacturers
>| rearranged the keyboard to make typing slower and more laborious, thus
>| preventing the speed "problems" faced on the earlier keyboards.

A common myth, having no real basis in fact.  The jamming problem was
real, but the cause was not fast typing per se.  (Do remember that
touch-typing was unknown at the time.)  The problem was hitting *adjacent
keys* in rapid succession.  The solution was not to slow down the typists,
but to put frequently-used keys well apart.  This has a slight tendency to
*speed up* typists, since it increases the chances that successive keys
will alternate between hands.

The Dvorak keyboard's advantages, in impartial tests, seldom exceed 10% or
thereabouts.  (One can actually get comparable speedup with the standard
layout by putting the RETURN key under the left thumb or using automatic
word-wrap to eliminate use of RETURN altogether.)  The much more
spectacular claims made by Dvorak enthusiasts have never been confirmed by
independent investigators.

However, there are enough people with religious convictions about the
massive superiority of the Dvorak keyboard that it would probably be worth
the cost of making suitable keycaps available.

>Sun would be much better served in offering a *selection* of keyboards
>than it would in forcing the IBM standard "like it or lump it" approach...

Now *this* I agree with; Sun is being stupid and arrogant.

                                     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
                                 uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry at zoo.toronto.edu