One of the things that drives me insane about OS X is that I actually had to download a tiny home-made hack to get the keyboard layout I was used to (" on shift-2, @ next to ;, # next to return).
Apple's idea of a British keyboard is: £ on shift 3, but all the others of those keys in what I think of as 'American' places.
Adrian and I both instantly thought this was to do with Apple having such an identity as a Californian company it's too arrogant to get its localisations right.
I whinged about this at the local Mac user group, and they all said it was the normal British keyboard layout.
Is this because: a) the Mac users are not touch-typists. b) the Mac users grew up to use computers on the Mac platform, so they assume the Apple way is the normal way (my 'Apple imperialism' argument) or c) Adrian and I both spent 20 years on MS platforms before I switched to Mac, and the Mac users are right (their 'MS imperialism' argument).
If any of you can remember the layout for typewriters before the IBM PC came along, it might settle the question, but also some of you are touch-typists and you're not using a MS platform, so that's another way of thinking about it.
Who's right?
Regards, R
My opinion of a what a _proper_ workable keyboard is one without a capslock key, and the CTRL key in it's place where it should be, the backslash key should be in the right place which is below backspace and above ENTER/RETURN. The " and @ keys are only the wrong way round on an MS keyboard.
Bare in mind Ruth, that MS does EVERYTHING differently. I am especially reminded of this as I reboot our AV and SMTP server for the 3rd time today on my "Tomy's My First Server Farm 2003".
Mac's have quite a nice unixish keyboard layout with no numlock key which is marvellous.
Rich
My opinion of a what a _proper_ workable keyboard is one without a capslock key, and the CTRL key in it's place where it should be, the
One of the very few things I miss from the MS platform is having a CTRL key as the main mod key -- IMO it's a somewhat better reach for a touch-typist than Cmd (main mod key on the Mac, next to the space bar).
I disabled the Capslock key because I never use it -- now I think about it, it's taking up room which could be used for Usefulness. Should try to think of some really useful thing I could bind to it if I ever find out how.
backslash key should be in the right place which is below backspace and above ENTER/RETURN. The " and @ keys are only the wrong way round on an MS keyboard.
Great, disambiguation! In combination with what Ted writes about the up-for-grabs keyboard bindings of The Typewriter Years, it's fairly conclusive. I will write an e-mail to the local Mac user group and tell them they were absolutely right and it *is* MS imperialism. I shall start retraining my fingers if at all possible (I did notice that even if it infuriated me because of where I learned to touch- type (on computers running the MS platforms), it's a slightly easier and more intuitive reach for quote-and-shift-quote than a short reach for single quote and shift-2 for double quote... and if Apple did that because of careful thought about the UI, I have no quarrel with them at all) For somebody like me who does fiction writing, it may actually be worth re-training for.
So OSs which *aren't MS* don't have that association between shift-2 and double-quote, and it was totally up-for-grabs in the typewriter years before the dominance of the computer.
Therefore the idea that Adrian and I both had about the 'standard UK keyboard layout' was based on the massive and unfair market dominance of a single company which decided to define various things by imperial fiat. I am tempted to add, what d'you expect of a company for whom Start stops the computer and Alt-F4 stops the app with the focus (Apple's approach of Cmd-Q stops the app with the focus so roolz by comparison!).
Bare in mind Ruth, that MS does EVERYTHING differently. I am especially reminded of this as I reboot our AV and SMTP server for the 3rd time today on my "Tomy's My First Server Farm 2003".
(giggle)
Mac's have quite a nice unixish keyboard layout with no numlock key which is marvellous.
Their userbase evidently based on designer/consumer/not accountant. Which if you aren't very businessy is a plus point.
Rich
Ruth
On Tue, Jun 19, 2007 at 02:38:29PM +0100, Ruth Bygrave wrote:
Therefore the idea that Adrian and I both had about the 'standard UK keyboard layout' was based on the massive and unfair market dominance of a single company which decided to define various things by imperial fiat. I am tempted to add, what d'you expect of a company for whom Start stops the computer and Alt-F4 stops the app with the focus (Apple's approach of Cmd-Q stops the app with the focus so roolz by comparison!).
That'd be wrong, especially given that Commodore with the Amiga had a very much like the current PC layout, except that \ and | were on the top right rather than bottom left. The Atari ST was similar but the \ and | were in the similar to pc places. The BBC micro also had " on shift+2 but other bits of the layout are crackful. Given that many of these date from the early 80's and well before Microsoft had a monopoly blaming them would be wrong ;)
Thanks Adam
On 6/19/07, Ruth Bygrave rbygrave@ntlworld.com wrote:
Therefore the idea that Adrian and I both had about the 'standard UK keyboard layout' was based on the massive and unfair market dominance of a single company which decided to define various things by imperial fiat.
My original IBM PC with UK keyboard came in two flavours - tall Carriage Return key or short but wide Carriage Return key. This affected the locations of the '' and '#' keys. I suspect this was IBM's design which Microsoft supported in the early versions of DOS. Apple, of course, avoided being 'IBM Compatible' at almost every turn in those early days.
So, what happens if you plug a non-Apple USB keyboard into a Mac running MacOS? Does it get all the keys right?
Tim.
On Tue, Jun 19, 2007 at 04:07:42PM +0100, Tim Green wrote:
So, what happens if you plug a non-Apple USB keyboard into a Mac running MacOS? Does it get all the keys right?
No, it asks you to push the key to the right of the left hand shift and sets the layout based on that and then promptly puts @ on shift-2.
Adam
On Tue, Jun 19, 2007 at 04:07:42PM +0100, Tim Green wrote:
So, what happens if you plug a non-Apple USB keyboard into a Mac running MacOS? Does it get all the keys right?
No, it asks you to push the key to the right of the left hand shift and sets the layout based on that and then promptly puts @ on shift-2.
Which is why I had this "Sodding Arrogant Californian Company Doesn't Bother To Get Its Localisations Right Even When It Has A Few Million Overseas Customers" reaction (which I was very frustrated about when I went to the Mac user groups because there were 0 users who hadn't grown up in the Mac ghetto or used a Mac as their first box).
R
On Tue, 2007-06-19 at 17:40 +0100, Ruth Bygrave wrote:
Which is why I had this "Sodding Arrogant Californian Company Doesn't Bother To Get Its Localisations Right Even When It Has A Few Million Overseas Customers" reaction (which I was very frustrated about when I went to the Mac user groups because there were 0 users who hadn't grown up in the Mac ghetto or used a Mac as their first box).
For US vs British keyboard layouts I still don't understand why localisation was necessary in the first place.
The British layout can type the US currency symbol with ease and has the # which seems to be more frequently used in the States (and my Asterisk box still keeps referring to as "pound") in a convenient (perhaps all to convenient) position.
As to layouts of typewriters-
There is a circa 1914 Royal typewriter in my spare room that has the following layout for shifted symbols
2-" 3-/ 4-@ 5-£
Oh and backspace is where the 1 should be (there is no 1)
On 6/19/07, Wayne Stallwood ALUGlist@digimatic.co.uk wrote:
Oh and backspace is where the 1 should be (there is no 1)
Use I or l ?
On Wed, 2007-06-20 at 07:43 +0100, Tim Green wrote:
On 6/19/07, Wayne Stallwood ALUGlist@digimatic.co.uk wrote:
Oh and backspace is where the 1 should be (there is no 1)
Use I or l ?
It is in a poorly state at the moment and under a pile of stuff so I can't tell for sure, but I think the typeface for l is tweaked a bit so as to look like a hybrid between a 1 and a l so perhaps just like pipe |.
It has always struck me as a little strange, because there are a couple of keys dedicated to just symbols (couple of common fractions etc that could easily be expressed as 1/2 etc) so I am sure providing more keys than just qwerty wasn't a problem or even necessarily that expensive.
I guess the driving force is that with a mechanical typewriter if it isn't on the included typeface then you can't ever use it so they wanted to provide as many symbols as possible, and they were further hampered by only having one modifier key.
Adrian pointed out that the way Apple *should* have done it was let the British Mac user's keyboard be discovered, and then have an option for:
------------------------------------------ If you are a touch-typist, would you like:
PC-style double-quotes (shift-2 is ", shift-' is @)
This may be the best option if you switched from a PC, or if you work on Macs and PCs.
or
Mac-style double-quotes (shift-2 is @, shift-' is ")
This is probably the best option if the only computer you want to use is your Mac.
If you are not a touch-typist, this will not make any difference to you.
You can always change this option later. ------------------------------------------------
Actually, I agree with him, and it's this that led to my whole 'arrogant Californians' idea in the first place. If there was a readily-available user-level thing which pointed out how to change it, the way there is for 'You have a Windows keyboard, would you like to swap Cmd and Option?", it wouldn't have bothered me in the slightest. It leaves me feeling they put more in for American switchers than Brits, really...
Although I do think Apple may have a point as far as UI/ergonomics is concerned, simply because of how much more often I need to type " than @...
Regards, Ruth
So, what happens if you plug a non-Apple USB keyboard into a Mac running MacOS? Does it get all the keys right?
More-or-less. I think the MS Wireless one actually has explicit Intellitype software for Mac, which handles that, and there's very easy-to-find software out there for swapping Command and Alt from the Windows Way (or now I think of it it might actually be in Sys Prefs -- but since there are so many Mac users doing that, it's easy to get.
The problem I had when I switched is that there are still so few switchers (comparatively to people who grew up on Macs because their family had one or they were in graphic design) that if you Google it's not as easy as it should be to find the keyboard hack to bind shift-2 to @. Actually, should glance at David Pogue's book on Tiger Switcher Edition (O'Reilly), because that would almost certainly cover this sort of Mac-as-a-Second-Language problem.
Regards, R
On 19-Jun-07 12:23:36, Ruth Bygrave wrote:
One of the things that drives me insane about OS X is that I actually had to download a tiny home-made hack to get the keyboard layout I was used to (" on shift-2, @ next to ;, # next to return).
Apple's idea of a British keyboard is: £ on shift 3, but all the others of those keys in what I think of as 'American' places.
Adrian and I both instantly thought this was to do with Apple having such an identity as a Californian company it's too arrogant to get its localisations right.
I whinged about this at the local Mac user group, and they all said it was the normal British keyboard layout.
Is this because: a) the Mac users are not touch-typists. b) the Mac users grew up to use computers on the Mac platform, so they assume the Apple way is the normal way (my 'Apple imperialism' argument) or c) Adrian and I both spent 20 years on MS platforms before I switched to Mac, and the Mac users are right (their 'MS imperialism' argument).
If any of you can remember the layout for typewriters before the IBM PC came along, it might settle the question, but also some of you are touch-typists and you're not using a MS platform, so that's another way of thinking about it.
Who's right?
That's a very interesting question! I've dug out an old Epson QX10 (CP/M machine) keyboard from somewhere around 1980. This at least does duty as a "UK" keyboard since it has a "£" on it!
The layout is:
ESC ! " £ $ % & ' ( ) _ = ~ | BS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - ^ \
TAB Q W E R T Y U I O P ` { } LF @ [ ]
CTR A S D F G H J K L + * RETURN ; :
SHIFT Z X C V B N M < > ? SHIFT , . /
so all the rows differ in various respects from the now standard UK keyboard. In particular there is no "#" marked on any key. The number of keys that are marked with printable characters is 47, as opposed to the now current 49.
I also have an old Sharp MZ80-B, which is different again.
Somewhere I have a real mechanical typewriter, but can't remember where! However, this would probably not agree with the UK keyboard for computers, since (depending on the model) you possibly did not have some or all of "#", "^", "~", "", "{", "}", "<", ">".
At
http://mrtypewriter.tripod.com/olympiasm9french.htm
I have found pictures of an old-style Olympia typewriter with what looks like an English keyboard. It's a bit beyond my eyesight to see all the characters on the keys (the clear picture of the English keyboard is only partial), but I reckon there are only 44 (maybe 45) keys with printable characters on them, so it's different again! In any case, one can see that there are keys for the fractions "1/4", "1/2", which are not part of the "UK keyboard".
So it looks as though it was "anarchy" until the PC standardised things. Which of course is to Apple as a red rag to a bull ...
For what it's worth: I have a friend who is assertively proud of his Apple (with some justification ... ). When I was looking at it the other day I indeed wondered where the "#" was on the keyboard, and asked.
He eventually found out how to do it -- after an extensive tour of the internals!
Best wishes, Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) ted.harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 19-Jun-07 Time: 14:19:39 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
(Ted Harding) wrote:
For what it's worth: I have a friend who is assertively proud of his Apple (with some justification ... ). When I was looking at it the other day I indeed wondered where the "#" was on the keyboard, and asked.
He eventually found out how to do it -- after an extensive tour of the internals!
That, for me as a programmer, was the biggest gripe about the Apple keyboard (notwithstanding the swapped " and @ keys) - getting a # was some some insane apple-shift-4 combination. If you spend a lot of time coding (and commenting) languages like Python or Perl, then this is a /real/ usability hassle.
In my experience of over 20 years using computers, I have always associated shift-2 with " and the key near return/enter as possessing the @ character. Even my trusty old 1977/78 Commodore PETs (well, CBM actually for the UK market) have the " character in the same position as the 2 would be on a "normal" UK keyboard. I did a fair amount of teaching over in the US, and I ended up taking my own keyboard with me as I would constantly end up typing stuff like 'food = @pasta@;' when using local machines. I feel that the original poster was right: Apple have more-or-less taken a default US keyboard and stuck a £ and Euro sign on it and called it "UK".
I too eventually subverted the Mac keyboard with the "hack" internationalisation file so I can use a regular keyboard with it - along with a sensible #, and " as shift-2 :-). Moving constantly from Mac to Linux (on conventional PC hardware) is just too much aggro otherwise.
Simon
================================================================== http://nosher.net nosher.net/images/images.rss
On Tue, Jun 19, 2007 at 01:23:36PM +0100, Ruth Bygrave wrote:
Adrian and I both instantly thought this was to do with Apple having such an identity as a Californian company it's too arrogant to get its localisations right.
From what i've read in the past this is /semi/-correct. When Apple first
sold machines for the uk they messed up the keyboard layout. They've let it stick now for over 20 years because they didn't want to change it as it'd be "confusing" for the die-hard users. I don't find it's /too/ much of a problem as it's so close to the US layout, I can now switch between British, American and Swedish layouts without /too/ much trouble (and I am a touch typist) just if I get hit with an azerty layout then I'm screwd.
Adam
I think I've got it now. In fact, everybody was right.
1) Typewriters didn't standardise on the punct/shifted keys consistently. 2) Adrian and I were right that Apple showed arrogance in ignoring the de facto localisation standard provided by overwhelming MS market dominance over the last 20 years. 3) The Mac user group may well be right that when Apple decided to face it out anyway, they had a look at the issue and decided that there wasn't enough reason to break the UI guidelines by having a poor 'reach' on something everybody used very frequently (double- quote) vs something that was effectively only used for e-mail addresses -- so it's used frequently-ish, but once you've got your machine properly set up with your address-book, you clip in e- addresses or start typing the shortcut name, and don't type the @ itself by hand much at all. Also, now I think about it, the 'double- quote is shifted single-quote' is intuitively obvious. After all, once I got used to not hitting my head against a brick wall by using Alt-F4 to close a running app, Cmd-Q made perfect sense and didn't take long to retrain my fingers at all.
Well, I'm glad that's sorted out! I'll give it a go seeing if I can retrain my fingers to the Mac British layout instead of hacking the keyboard to the MS UK layout -- but maybe 20 years of brainwashing by MS will prove too strong. Dammit.
How's Linux for UI and consistent keybindings? You realise this will have a big influence on whether I feel 'at home' in it, even practising with a LiveCD.
Regards, (...fights the urge to say 'Or do you all live inside emacs and have four hands apiece?' <gd&r>...) Ruth
On 19-Jun-07 14:51:03, Ruth Bygrave wrote:
How's Linux for UI and consistent keybindings? You realise this will have a big influence on whether I feel 'at home' in it, even practising with a LiveCD.
Regards, (...fights the urge to say 'Or do you all live inside emacs and have four hands apiece?' <gd&r>...) Ruth
Well, I live *with* vim, and have four *fingers* (OK, I have others too, but they're vestigial when it comes to typing).
Consistent keybindings in Linux: When you install, you're asked what kind of keyboard you have (not just the national version, but also e.g. how many keys, plus possibly other variants), and once set up this should work silently. You can always change or add to key-bindings on a per-key basis if you want to.
Perhaps you're referring to use of short-cut key-bindings in a GUI? This tends to depend on which application you're working in, and/or on which window-manager in X you're working with. No fixed rules here, and if you're expecting the kind of uniformly consistent bindings associated with Microsoft and Apple then it will be a bit of a culture shift. However, it's often possible to change these so as to bring them more in line with each other in your own setup.
Since it's beginning to appear that you're new to Linux, Ruth, I have to quote a piece from some years ago, which puts things in perspective.
What if Operating Systems Were Airlines? ======================================== DOS Airlines ------------ Everybody pushes the airplane until it glides, then they jump on and let the plane coast until it hits the ground again, then they push again jump on again, and so on.
Windows Air ----------- The terminal is pretty and colorful, with friendly stewards, easy baggage check and boarding, and a smooth take-off. After about 10 minutes in the air, the plane explodes with no warning whatsoever.
Windows NT Air (Also XP, Vista Airlines) ---------------------------------------- Just like Windows Air, but costs more, uses much bigger planes, and takes out all the other aircraft within a 40-mile radius when it explodes.
Mac Airlines ------------ All the stewards, stewardesses, captains, baggage handlers, and ticket agents look the same, act the same, and talk the same. Every time you ask questions about details, you are told you don't need to know, don't want to know, and would you please return to your seat and watch the movie.
Unix Airlines ------------- Each passenger brings a piece of the airplane and a box of tools to the airport. They gather on the tarmac, arguing constantly about what kind of plane they want to build and how to put it together. Eventually, they build several different aircraft, but give them all the same name. Some passengers actually reach their destinations. All passengers believe they got there.
Linux Airlines -------------- Disgruntled employees of all the other OS airlines decide to start their own airline. They build the planes, ticket counters, and pave the runways themselves. They charge a small fee to cover the cost of printing the ticket, but you can also download and print the ticket yourself. When you board the plane, you are given a seat, four bolts, a wrench and a copy of the seat-HOWTO.html. Once settled, the fully adjustable seat is very comfortable, the plane leaves and arrives on time without a single problem, the in-flight meal is wonderful. You try to tell customers of the other airlines about the great trip, but all they can say is: "You had to do what with the seat?"
[OS/2 Airlines, Wings of OS/400, Mach Airlines, Newton Airlines, and BeOS Air omitted since they are no longer flying. However, cannot resist quoting the remaining defunct airline]:
VMS Airlines ------------ The passengers all gather in the hanger, watching hundreds of technicians check the flight systems on this immense, luxury aircraft. This plane has at least 10 engines and seats over 1,000 passengers. All the passengers scramble aboard, as do the necessary complement of 200 technicians. The pilot takes his place up in the glass cockpit. He guns the engines, only to realise that the plane is too big to get through the hangar doors.
So now you know where you are!
Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) ted.harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 19-Jun-07 Time: 16:27:45 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
On Tue, 2007-06-19 at 16:27 +0100, ted.harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk wrote:
However, cannot resist quoting the remaining defunct airline]:
VMS Airlines
I'd like to see you go to pretty much any bank or LFO (large financial organisation) and tell them that VMS is defunct
Sure they are planning on migrating away from it, given that the last porting effort was to itanium which may not have a certain future, but they are still running it and probably will do for a long time yet.
Oh and up until very very recently every SMS routed via most Mobile phone networks was routed by VMS, they are mostly trying to migrate to a Linux platform at the moment.
Wayne Stallwood wrote:
On Tue, 2007-06-19 at 16:27 +0100, ted.harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk wrote:
However, cannot resist quoting the remaining defunct airline]:
VMS Airlines
I'd like to see you go to pretty much any bank or LFO (large financial organisation) and tell them that VMS is defunct
Sure they are planning on migrating away from it, given that the last porting effort was to itanium which may not have a certain future, but they are still running it and probably will do for a long time yet.
Oh and up until very very recently every SMS routed via most Mobile phone networks was routed by VMS, they are mostly trying to migrate to a Linux platform at the moment.
How I'd love a job porting from VMS to Linux! I have oodles of VMS experience, albeit somewhat rusty now. I worked in several European countries as a programmer and then 3rd-line support on VMS for about 14 years. I've got the best part of 10 years on Linux now as well.
Cheers, Laurie.
Ruth Bygrave rbygrave@ntlworld.com wrote:
I think I've got it now. In fact, everybody was right. [...]
No. Everybody was wrong. ;-)
www.cykey.co.uk should have won by now.
Regards,
On 19/06/07, MJ Ray mjr@phonecoop.coop wrote:
Ruth Bygrave rbygrave@ntlworld.com wrote:
I think I've got it now. In fact, everybody was right. [...]
No. Everybody was wrong. ;-)
www.cykey.co.uk should have won by now.
Perhaps you should just get one of these - http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus/ - and assign anything you like to any key. A bargain at just (?) €1256.86.
Greg
On 19 Jun 2007, at 22:24, MJ Ray wrote:
Ruth Bygrave rbygrave@ntlworld.com wrote:
I think I've got it now. In fact, everybody was right. [...]
No. Everybody was wrong. ;-)
www.cykey.co.uk should have won by now.
Yes, but pure ergonomics is never going to win over the economies of the market, unfortunately for those of us for whom the chord keyboard makes perfect sense.
Mind you, the ergonomics of CyKey and Agenda are IMO broken compared to the original Microwriter, because the Agenda's stupid 'chiclet' keys designed for businessmen got in the way a bit, and both the later models seem to have lost that big hefty palmrest with 'light' chord keys which made it heavy-to-carry but incredibly usable-without- looking-at-it.
If you had one and took to it, you could learn the idea in about a week, and spend years carrying it about with you, pulling it out on buses and typing very comfortably. All alpha-numeric-and-punct were right under your hand, so you never had to orient yourself, it was steady on one leg, and the battery lasted a fair time because the machine wasn't that ambitious. The delete key was a comfortable reach, so I'd check the 16-char screen, rattle through delete for typos without even thinking about it -- and have a distraction-free non-glam note-taking environment.
Unfortunately, the market will now not support that sort of heavy ugly thing on ergonomics alone, and prefers eye candy and convergence.
Also unfortunately, if you've used a Microwriter consistently for three years, and had it torn out of your clenching hands as you left college, it's a *bugger* to retrain on Qwerty to get to the same level...
Regards, R
On Thu, 2007-06-21 at 20:47 +0100, Ruth Bygrave wrote:
On 19 Jun 2007, at 22:24, MJ Ray wrote:
Ruth Bygrave rbygrave@ntlworld.com wrote:
I think I've got it now. In fact, everybody was right. [...]
No. Everybody was wrong. ;-)
www.cykey.co.uk should have won by now.
Yes, but pure ergonomics is never going to win over the economies of the market, unfortunately for those of us for whom the chord keyboard makes perfect sense.
Mind you, the ergonomics of CyKey and Agenda are IMO broken compared to the original Microwriter, because the Agenda's stupid 'chiclet' keys designed for businessmen got in the way a bit, and both the later models seem to have lost that big hefty palmrest with 'light' chord keys which made it heavy-to-carry but incredibly usable-without- looking-at-it.
My trusty Agenda hardly left my side for many years until it got stolen. By the time that happened they were nearly impossible to find so I moved to a Psion series 5 and then after that a Palm. Both the Psion and the Palm were streets ahead in terms of software capability, but I never achieved anything like the same input speed using graffiti or (what was the best ever) pda size qwerty keyboard.
The chiclet keyboard on the Agenda got in the way a bit I agree, but was pretty much essential for anything other than very common symbols. I don't think I ever quite got up to Full size QWERTY speeds, but I got better speeds than on any text input device I have used of a similar size.
I did start seriously looking at the CyKey, even to the point of asking MJR about it once I had a "tip off" from #alug that he had one. But on reflection I think I have decided that it is of more limited benefit on a desktop computer, even more so when you are trying to drive Gnome with a combination of mouse in your right hand and keyboard shortcuts.
If you had one and took to it, you could learn the idea in about a week, and spend years carrying it about with you, pulling it out on buses and typing very comfortably. All alpha-numeric-and-punct were right under your hand, so you never had to orient yourself, it was steady on one leg, and the battery lasted a fair time because the machine wasn't that ambitious. The delete key was a comfortable reach, so I'd check the 16-char screen, rattle through delete for typos without even thinking about it -- and have a distraction-free non-glam note-taking environment.
Unfortunately, the market will now not support that sort of heavy ugly thing on ergonomics alone, and prefers eye candy and convergence.
Also unfortunately, if you've used a Microwriter consistently for three years, and had it torn out of your clenching hands as you left college, it's a *bugger* to retrain on Qwerty to get to the same level...
Regards, R
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