Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!pacbell!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!mcvax!ukc!strath-cs!glasgow!jack From: jack@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Mr Jack Campin) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: keyboards Message-ID: <1414@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> Date: 22 Jun 88 11:11:49 GMT References: <5024@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> <1988Jun13.195851.1729@utzoo.uucp> <556@ecrcvax.UUCP>Reply-To: jack@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin) Organization: PISA Project, Glesga Yoonie Lines: 24 Summary: Expires: Sender: Followup-To: Keywords: In article gaynor@athos.rutgers.edu (Silver) writes: >> How about foot pedals? Namely shift, cntrl, ESC (for EMACS), and return. >I've heard that footmice and other attempts at trying to get one's >feet to convey spatial information failed out the wazoo. However, ask >a keyboard player or a rock guitarist how much control one has over >sets of footpedals... It's not the same as driving, but driving does >demonstrate to non-musicians that good control is possible. Feet seem to be good at two things; expressing intensity (as with an accelerator) or for discrete switching (as with guitar controls). Organists can do the latter at astonishing speed. Alkan wrote a four-voice fugue for one pair of feet that he could perform on a a piano modified with a pedalboard. How about using pressure to do menu selections or control things like font size and typestyle? Your neighbours below might start complaining when you get to 48-point bold shadow underline, though... -- ARPA: jack%cs.glasgow.ac.uk@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk USENET: jack@cs.glasgow.uucp JANET:jack@uk.ac.glasgow.cs useBANGnet: ...mcvax!ukc!cs.glasgow.ac.uk!jack Mail: Jack Campin, Computing Science Dept., Glasgow Univ., 17 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow G12 8QQ, SCOTLAND work 041 339 8855 x 6045; home 041 556 1878