This is NeXT-keyboards in view mode; [Up]
Date: Sun 05-Feb-1991 17:26:01 From: kjell@saturn.ucsc.edu (Kjell Post) Subject: Re: NeXT keyboards In article <1991Feb5.032803.23922@ni.umd.edu> louie@sayshell.umd.edu (Louis A. Mamakos) writes: >Just because the European market demands an >unusable keyboard is no reason we should be stuck with one. (This is >the explanation/excuse that I've been told.) > >louie We don't want it either! I type a lot of Swedish text and the '|' is used as a replacement for the o-with-umlaut character. Not to mention plumbing-work in UNIX... <sigh>. I'd be interested to hear if anyone has figured out a good place for putting that "lost" key back on the keyboard.
Date: Sun 04-Feb-1991 17:34:14 From: lacsap@plethora.media.mit.edu (Pascal Chesnais) Subject: NeXT keyboards I'd like to remind the people who are dissatisfied with the new keyboards that they have a responsibility as consumers to let NeXT know their opinions about their products. It is such frank communications that resulted in Lotus removing one of their products from the market. NeXT does listen to its customers. pasc
Date: Sun 05-Feb-1991 20:50:08 From: carlton@aldebaran (Mike Carlton) Subject: Re: NeXT keyboards In article <11946@darkstar.ucsc.edu> kjell@saturn.ucsc.edu (Kjell Post) writes: >In article <1991Feb5.032803.23922@ni.umd.edu> louie@sayshell.umd.edu (Louis A. Mamakos) writes: >>Just because the European market demands an >>unusable keyboard is no reason we should be stuck with one. (This is >>the explanation/excuse that I've been told.) >> >>louie > >We don't want it either! I type a lot of Swedish text and the '|' is >used as a replacement for the o-with-umlaut character. Not to mention >plumbing-work in UNIX... <sigh>. > >I'd be interested to hear if anyone has figured out a good place for >putting that "lost" key back on the keyboard. I put the pipe on shift-delete. Normally shift-delete produces backspace, but I don't use it (besides there is always cntl-h). After a little searching, I found the right bytes to munge in the keymapping to produce the pipe. You want to replace the sequence 'stx nul del nul bs' with 'stx nul del nul |'. It is at offset 0312 in USA.keymapping, i.e. 'od -a /NextLibrary/Keyboards/USA.keymapping | grep 0000300' produces: 0000300 soh - nul nul 2 nul nul 5 del del stx nul del nul bs nl I copied the USA.keymapping to ~/Library/Keyboards/pipe.keymapping and munged it, restarted Preferences and selected the new mapping and it works like a charm. Cheers, --mike Mike Carlton carlton@cs.berkeley.edu
Date: Sun 04-Feb-1991 23:48:47 From: melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger) Subject: Re: NeXT keyboards In article <5111@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> lacsap@plethora.media.mit.edu (Pascal Chesnais) writes: I'd like to remind the people who are dissatisfied with the new keyboards that they have a responsibility as consumers to let NeXT know their opinions about their products. It is such frank communications that resulted in Lotus removing one of their products from the market. Which Lotus product are you talking about? NeXT does listen to its customers. How are we suppose to tell them? NeXT, I don't need a return key that big!! Put the extra key back on the keyboard. Don't the programmers at NeXT find the new keyboards an inconvenience? -Mike
Date: Sun 05-Feb-1991 03:28:03 From: louie@sayshell.umd.edu (Louis A. Mamakos) Subject: Re: NeXT keyboards In article <_u8G$b1f@cs.psu.edu> melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger) writes: >How are we suppose to tell them? NeXT, I don't need a return key that >big!! Pick up the phone, and call the (free) 800 number and explain that you are very unhappy about the new keyboard layout, and that you won't buy a computer with a crummy, user unfriendly keyboard. Or, if you bought a system, you can complain that all the demo units you saw had the "classic" keyboard and that the marketing glossies have the "classic" keyboard and that you want and expect the product that you ORDERED and PAID for. If you were buying a car, I'd call it bait and switch. Call your salesman, your campus computer store or your Businessland store and explain that you are an UNHAPPY customer, and that you CANNOT recommend the purchase of a computer with such a blecherous keyboard to any of your friends or business associates. Or tell them that as a prospective customoer, you can't possibly live with a computer with a broken keyboard. This mean lost sales for them. Think of it this way; it was marketing slime that likely caused this atrocity to happen. The the marketing people the kind of stuff that they want to hear. Just because the European market demands an unusable keyboard is no reason we should be stuck with one. (This is the explanation/excuse that I've been told.) louie
Date: Sun 05-Feb-1991 21:56:18 From: barry@pico.math.ucla.edu (Barry Merriman) Subject: Re: NeXT keyboards melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger) writes: >Don't the programmers >at NeXT find the new keyboards an inconvenience? No, they're all using NeXTStep 2.1 which supports telepathic input :-)
Date: Sun 06-Feb-1991 04:15:30 From: coco@cbnewsl.att.com (felix.a.lugo) Subject: Re: NeXT keyboards In article <1046@kaos.MATH.UCLA.EDU> barry@pico.math.ucla.edu (Barry Merriman) writes: | melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger) writes: | | >Don't the programmers | >at NeXT find the new keyboards an inconvenience? | | No, they're all using NeXTStep 2.1 which supports telepathic input :-) | Probably they're still using the original keyboards and haven't even seen the new versions, or, they were probably as surprised as you and I are after they saw them. If I were NeXT, I would not go out and replace developer's keyboards every time a new design comes along. (Maybe NeXT is now replacing developer's keyboard for the ones customers turn in. They get the new versions, we get the good ones.) 8^) /* ** ============================================================================ ** ** Felix A. Lugo AT&T Bell Laboratories ** ** E-Mail: ** (708) 713-4374 coco@ihlpb.att.com att!ihlpb!coco ** ** NeXT-Mail: ** (708) 515-0668 coco@alien.att.com alien.att.com!bootsie!coco ** ** ============================================================================ */
Date: Sun 06-Feb-1991 20:04:39 From: carlton@aldebaran (Mike Carlton) Subject: Re: NeXT keyboards In article <10811@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> carlton@aldebaran.berkeley.edu (Mike Carlton) writes: -- a bunch of useless stuff about moving the pipe to shift-del OK, I was pretty cryptic in my previous message. In short, I found the delete key entry in a keymap and and posted it's location. I got several responses requesting info on how to actually change it. Below is source to a quick hack that reads a keymap on stdin and changes the shift-del character to one given on the command line. To run, compile this and run "a.out '|' </NextLibrary/Keyboards/USAkeymapping >new.keymapping". Move new.keymapping to ~/Library/Keyboards, /NextLibrary/Keyboards or /LocalLibrary/Keyboards, restart Preferences and it will appear in the list of keyboards. If anyone needs a compiled copy of this, send me mail and I'll email a uuencoded copy to you. Cheers, --mike Mike Carlton carlton@cs.berkeley.edu --------- cut here ------------------------------------------------------------- #include <stdio.h> #define stx '\002' #define nul '\000' #define del '\177' char delmap[] = { stx, nul, del, nul }; /* Next char is shift-del */ int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { int i, bytes; char buf[1024], *key, *lim; if (argc != 2) { fprintf(stderr, "Usage: %s shift_del_char\n", argv[0]); fprintf(stderr, "Reads a keymap on stdin and writes modified one to stdout\n"); exit(1); } bytes = fread(buf, sizeof(char), 1024, stdin); key = buf; lim = key+bytes; while (key < lim) { for (i=0; i<4; i++) if (key[i] != delmap[i]) break; if (i == 4) { /* matched */ key[4] = argv[1][0]; break; } else key++; } if (key == lim) { fprintf(stderr, "Del key map not found\n", argv[0]); exit(1); } fwrite(buf, sizeof(char), bytes, stdout); return 0; } Mike Carlton carlton@cs.berkeley.edu
Date: Sun 08-Feb-1991 19:50:51 From: glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid) Subject: Re: NeXT keyboards In article <10839@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> carlton@aldebaran.berkeley.edu (Mike Carlton) writes: >Below is source to a quick hack that reads a keymap on stdin and changes the >shift-del character to one given on the command line. To run, compile >this and run "a.out '|' </NextLibrary/Keyboards/USAkeymapping >new.keymapping". This is a great hack, and it seems to work well, except that it should be "USA.keymapping" in your example above. But what about the backslash character? That's still lurking over on the numeric keypad.... As long as we're chorusing, I don't like the new keyboards either, and if NeXT offered the old one, I would throw this one away. It amuses me that the NeXTstation comes with a manual called "Here's how to set up your computer and get up to speed," in which they talk about pressing the "Delete" key and the "Tab" key, but the keys are labeled "<--" and "|<-- -->|" on the actual keyboard. It is a beautiful book, though.
Date: Sun 08-Feb-1991 22:13:12 From: pclark@SRC.Honeywell.COM (Peter Clark) Subject: Re: NeXT keyboards Here's my $0.02 worth: I would like to see NeXT adapt Apple's Desktop Bus standard. At the risk of annoying the religious folk, the Desktop bus strikes me as being a great idea. Letting the user choose what input device to use, whether it's a mouse or a trackball or a digitizing pad, or a keyboard with or without function keys, and whether it's from apple/NeXT/datadesk/whoever, is surely part of computing access for the masses. I love the next, and I prefer the old keyboards. I wouldn't mind being able to take the old NeXT keyboard and attaching it to a mac or a pc, for that matter. Pete Clark
Date: Sun 09-Feb-1991 01:53:56 From: carlton@aldebaran (Mike Carlton) Subject: Re: NeXT keyboards In article <415@heaven.woodside.ca.us> glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid) writes: >In article <10839@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> carlton@aldebaran.berkeley.edu (Mike Carlton) writes: > >>Below is source to a quick hack that reads a keymap on stdin and changes the >>shift-del character to one given on the command line. To run, compile >>this and run "a.out '|' </NextLibrary/Keyboards/USAkeymapping >new.keymapping". > >This is a great hack, and it seems to work well, except that it should be >"USA.keymapping" in your example above. > >But what about the backslash character? That's still lurking over on the >numeric keypad.... > ... > Glenn Reid RightBrain Software Yeah, what do we do about backslash? My first thought was to place it on shift-return. Sounds good to me. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to work, hitting shift-return just produces return. The key entry type for the return and delete keys are different (although they have the same form otherwise), so it makes sense that they can be treated differently (why I don't know, ask Next). Another possibility is to place \ on shift-tab. Kind of a weird place, but at least it's on the main keyboard. I'm still getting used to it. If you want to try this, use ht ('011') instead of del in the map array of the source posted earlier. Or, as someone else recently mentioned, you can place \ on control- something. The Keyboard app might actually be able to do this for you (although I haven't tried it). Cheers, Mike Carlton carlton@cs.berkeley.edu
These are the contents of the former NiCE NeXT User Group NeXTSTEP/OpenStep software archive, currently hosted by Marcel Waldvogel and Netfuture.ch.