Date: Tue, 02 Sep 1997 17:53:52 -0700 From: "Mike O'Brien" <obrien@anpiel.aero.org> To: hcremean@vt.edu Cc: John Fieber <jfieber@indiana.edu>, chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Microsoft the GUI King (was Re: ATT Unix for Windows) Message-ID: <199709030053.RAA14158@anpiel.csd> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 01 Sep 1997 10:24:15 PDT." <19970901132415.28167@wakky.dyn.ml.org>
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> > No, God doesn't really enter into the picture. Douglas > > Engelbart, who invented the mouse, intended for it to be used in > > conjunction with a one handed keyboard. In that configuration it > > proved to be a very effective input device, but with a pretty > > steep learning curve for people familiar with the old two handed > > keyboard. > > FWIW, I have seen one-handed keyboards of the sort Engelbart proposed > advertised in the backs of pooter magazines....they look interesting. Some years back I went over to Marina del Rey to visit with Jon Postel, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), to take a look at his work setup. Jon was probably THE last user of NLS, the On-Line System, which was the system created by Engelbart. I think the last PDP-10 that ISI had was kept running as a dinosaur for several years after all the others were gone, just to support IANA and NLS. NLS did use a standard keyboard. The notion was that NLS was set up as an outline system. Everything was structured as an outline, with an arbitrary number of items an arbitrary number of levels deep. Navigation through the outline was handled by means of the mouse and chord keyboard, at which Jon was quite adept (needless to say). However, it would be a mistake to think that the chord keyboard was used for substantive text input. NLS was set up as a system of mouse selection (point, click with the mouse) followed by a two-letter NLS command (ka-chunk, ka-chunk on the chord keyboard). So, a large part of an NLS session went point, click, ka-chunk, ka-chunk, point, click, ka-chunk, ka-chunk, and so on, without moving the hands off either device. When it came time for text input, though, life was different. Both hands came back to the main keyboard. I asked Jon what the dividing line was: how many characters did he have to type that would make him move back to the main keyboard? His answer: "About ten." The coding used on the chord keyboard was basically binary. It probably bore a very strong resemblance to five-level Baudot. This Blast From the Past has been brought to you by a Genuine Old Phart, accept no substitutes. Mike O'Brien
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