OT: Dream keyboard

From: der Mouse <mouse_at_Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
Date: Thu Aug 26 21:55:51 2004

> OK, all this talk about best and worst, what features would you have
> on your dream keyboard?

Soft keycaps - make every keycap a small (64x64?) display.

Rearrangeable layout - some kind of mechanical setup such that keys can
be moved around. (I can imagine something like a 1mm sawtooth on the
edge of each key, so that with a surround the key positions are frozen,
but if the surround is removed they can be rearranged.)

Getting the rearrangeable layout and still arranging the necessary
signals to each key would be interesting, but I believe it could be
solved. Perhaps there could be power carried along the sides of every
key, with some kind of optical free-space communication (Ethernet over
light through air, anyone?) between the keys and the keyboard
controller.

Soft-keycaps has a number of benefits. Push the shift key and most of
the keys on the keyboard switch to their shifted versions. Load a
Dvorak keybaord layout and the letters all move around. Help yourself
learn to touchtype by making all the keycaps go blank. Run a typing
tutor and it could make the key you want to type next flash. Gospodin
Sokolov could switch between Cyrillic keycaps and ASCII keycaps.
(They'd need software help, of course, but that's a SMOP. Given the
hardware, the software can be created.)

It would be a bit expensive, but flexibility is.

> Mine:

> Bluetooth wireless or corded USB/PS2 operation with rechargable
> batteries

*shiver* As long as you can disable bluetooth in hardware. I do _not_
want any radio capability! It's a security disaster waiting to happen.

> Works on Mac/PC/Sun/almost anything (Ideally it would come with a
> breakout kit to build your own adapter. Wishful thinking...)

Indeed, especially since many of those are incompatible in fairly
fundamental electrical senses. (Suns use RS232 timing with TTL signal
levels. Macs use ADB. Peecees use...well, I don't really know _what_
peecees use (for the PS/2 style), as I've (thankfully!) never had
occasion to care, but I'm pretty sure it's electrically incompatible
with Suns, ADB, and USB.)

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Received on Thu Aug 26 2004 - 21:55:51 BST