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From: seifert@hammer.UUCP (Snoopy)
Newsgroups: net.internat
Subject: Re: What do we REALLY want?
Message-ID: <1612@hammer.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 3-Nov-85 00:38:17 EST
Article-I.D.: hammer.1612
Posted: Sun Nov  3 00:38:17 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 4-Nov-85 03:25:55 EST
References: <723@inset.UUCP> <960@erix.UUCP> <1569@hammer.UUCP> <6066@utzoo.UUCP> <1581@hammer.UUCP> <18@diku.UUCP>
Reply-To: tekecs!doghouse.TEK!snoopy
Organization: The Daisy Hill Puppy Farm
Lines: 39
Summary: Certainly not a keyboard the size of a soccer field!

In article <18@diku.UUCP> kimcm@diku.UUCP (Kim Christian Madsen) writes:

> Can you imagine a keyboard with 65535 different characters available,
> *WOUW* (-; 

I'd rather not, actually.  One possibility is that the terminal can
*display* any character, but the keyboard remains a reasonable size.
There could be an optional second keyboard with additional characters.

> Maybe we shall have to wait for the computer which understands human
> speech, and then translates the spoken word into the proper characters!

This is bound to be unsuitable for many environments.  Would be nice to
have around when it *was* useable, though!  Might be especially handy
for portable computers, where the keyboard is already the limiting
factor for compactness.

> However to use LATIN, japanese, chinese, arabic, hebraian and other
> characters types simultaneously on the same keyboard isn't going to
> work well.

I'd like to see a 'standard western keyboard' that had all the
characters for English, German, French, Swedish, etc., plus
Greek for math/engr and for APL, a few of the common math symbols,
and of course copyright and trademark symbols for all the net lawyers.
:-)  A few simple graphics characters would be nice.  This is
possible on a keyboard of reasonable size.  Soft keys would allow
easy access to a 'few' other characters.  (The keyboard I'm using now
has 24 (!) extra soft keys.  Wish I could load them up with alphas and
umlauts and such.) These can be downloaded from the host easily enough.
If you need another language like Hebrew or Chinese, plug in a second
keyboard.  (Presumably in, say China, the Chinese keyboard would be the
primary, and the western keyboard the optional one.)

Is that better?

Auf Wiedersehen,
Snoopy (ECS RONIN #901)
tektronix!tekecs!doghouse.TEK!snoopy