Re: [MiNT] My remarks (2)

[Maurits van de Kamp <maurits@bassment.nu>]

On Wed, 4 Aug 2004, Petr Stehlik wrote:

> "One really stupid thing about PeeCee keyboards is that manufacturers
> even realized that putting caps-lock on home row was a bad idea because
> people kept hitting it with the 'a' key. Did they move it? No, that
> would be too sensible.

I agree with Konrad that the fact that a key can be hit together with
another key is on itself not a reason for putting them next to each other.
Otherwise, no two keys should be next to each other. And what do these
users think of accidentally hitting ctrl+a instead of caps+a?

> Please note that the text above confirms both things: A) the key left to
> 'A' is real close and can be pressed accidentaly together with 'A', but
> also B) the Control key is better at the position where Atari put it
> since users of PC keyboard with CapsLock there try to remap the Control
> key there.

That's because those users want to get rid of caps lock alltogether and
hence want to put another more useful key there. This has nothing to do
with basic ergonomic design (if you would take this into account at design
stage, you might as well get rid of caps lock alltogether, like shift
lock), and what about these other "hard to reach" keys like alt(gr) and
cmd?

Keys in the corner are not harder to reach, except they are just not
within quick reach of fingers that are busy typing words. That's why in
>90% of all keyboards, ctrl, cmd and alt are there because they, and in
particular ctrl, are not needed in the midst of typing words.

Now if a user desides for himself that he finds certain keys useless (like
caps or `) and wants to make use of that fact by putting keys like control
and esc closer to the middle, that's fine for that user but it's not
something one would call functional ergonomic design.

However Petr, my compliments for being the only one besides me who keeps
track of the actual point. :o)

> > What's AHCX?
> http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=AHCX&btnG=Search
> "A Homemade C teXt editor"

Looks nifty :o)

Maurits.