Re: keyboard

[Todd Showalter <todd altsoftware com>]

On 3 Dec 1998, Sam Vilain wrote:

> "Fox, Kevin M" <kmfox@bhi010.bhi-erc.com> writes:
> 
>> to the gnome menu. Do you think we could get some keyboard maker to
>> replace the windows key with a gnome key? :)
> 
> I want a PC keyboard with all the extra keys you get on Sun keyboards,
> plus "Meta", "Super", "Hyper", no windows keys at all, and one with
> just the GNOME foot.  Oh, and all the alternate characters you get
> with "AltGr" held down printed in a different colour on the keys.

    As long as we're wishing...  :)

    I'd like a keyboard with a built-in CPU (maybe one of the Hitachi
SuperH series) and maybe 4mb of RAM.  Make the keys 32x32 flatscreen
displays (the big cost of flatscreens is failure rate on the large panels,
right?), and let *me* program what the keys look like.  That way, if I
want a gnome foot key, I *program* one.  If I want a "copy" key, I
*program* one.  If I want a dvorak layout, my keyboard *looks* like
dvorak, and if I want cyrillic or kanji, I can have them and the keyboard
shows me what is where.

    It lets me do neat chrome stuff too.  Make the keys flash when you
type stuff (how often have you half-hit a key when typing in a password
and wondered if it registered?), change key appearences to register the
effects of modifier keys, have a daemon running on the OS side that can
update the keyboard to reflect keymappings for the program in focus...

    But if wishes were fishes we'd all eat for free...

    Closer to topic, you can get Super and Hyper out of the M$ keys by
playing with the keymaps in X.

							Todd.

--
Todd Showalter       |  "The time has come," the Walrus said,
                     |    "to talk of many things:"
gandalf@interlog.com |
todd@altsoftware.com |                            Lewis Carroll