Emacs Keyboard Design 13

More observations follow.

keyboard-layout-13.png

  • VI keyboard is redundant if you prioritize Escape placement
  • Ortho-linear?
    • How about grid or matrix?
  • The mouse keys are toys, don’t need them
  • Volume control is a toy, the OS can do it
    • Helps make it work well cross-platform, too
  • I need to color the keys by my classification of how I see them or how Emacs sees them
    • EMACS MODIFIERS
      • Ctrl
      • Including Escape?
      • Emacs can use OS modifiers, that is user’s call
      • Include every permutation?
    • OS MODIFIERS
      • Ctrl
      • Alt
      • Gui
      • Include every permutation?
      • Symbol 2 and Symbol 3
        • Use the character in the 2nd or 3rd column of the cap
        • Shift can modify it
        • Allows APL keyboard or more
      • Function
        • Laptops have them
        • Let arrow keys be page up for example
        • How is this different than Symbol2 and Symbol2???
      • Meh
        • Seems like a good thing for generic programs
          • Required with More f keys?
            • Yea definitely, still useful for every OS
    • SYMBOLS
      • Latin
      • Greek
      • Unicode
      • F keys
    • COMPUTER
      • Print screen
      • Do I need scroll lock?
      • Do I need pause/break?
    • DESTRUCTORS
      • Backspace and delete
      • Insert
    • Movement
      • Arrow keys move cursor in buffer
      • Return and space insert symbols, but they are more about movement than the character, kind of
  • Bigger than 8×16?
    • Nice to use more
    • Don’t want to clash with other vendor offerings
      • Scope helps define priorities; without it include all of Unicode
  • Include Greek and APL?
    • Personal preference
    • Intriguing
    • Can re-image firmware anyway, so it’s a question of keycaps and firmware, not the keyboard itself
  • Labels keys with names instead of actual signal
  • Make fonts symbols take up space of entire cap
  • Keyboards
    • Insert symbols into buffer
    • Modify the buffer
    • Move point to different locations in the buffer
    • Tell the OS things
    • Change buffer modification mode
    • Is it true that everything keyboards do is to provide characters that might be modified?

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