6 Feb
2021
6 Feb
'21
8:57 a.m.
Hi all,
On a completely different note... I’ve been delving into typing tutor programs of late.
Quite a mishmash of approaches out there. Not at all like what I remember from junior high
- The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog, kinda stuff. Best of breed may be Mavis
Beacon Teaches Typing on the gui front, and I hate to admit it, gnu typist, on the console
front.
I’m wondering if there are some well considered unix programs, historically, for learning
typing? Or did everyone spring into the unix world accomplished typists straight outta
school? I did see mention a while back about a TOPS-10 typing tutor, not unix, but in the
spirit - surely there's some unix history around typing tutors.
Thanks,
Will
6 Feb
6 Feb
10:55 p.m.
On Fri, Feb 5, 2021 at 9:57 PM Will Senn <will.senn(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I did see mention a while back about a TOPS-10 typing
tutor, not unix, but
in the spirit - surely there's some unix history around typing tutors.
Nah I just learned to push harder on the ASR-33 keys ;-)
Funny, back-in-the-day, the local public HS had a typing class for the
girls, which two of my sisters took. The all-male prep-school where my
dad taught and my brothers and I all went, had nothing. But I had access to
an ASR-33 and just migrated to it.
To this day, my wife (who is a concert pianist/organist) can touch type but
she is amazed at watching me with my 2, 3 or 4 finger style.
Clem
ᐧ
11:22 p.m.
One of the smartest things my mother did was make me take typing in
summer school one year. Little did she or I knew that being able to
type 60WPM was going to become a very important asset in my eventual
career.
------ Original Message ------
From: "Clem Cole" <clemc(a)ccc.com>
To: "Will Senn" <will.senn(a)gmail.com>
Cc: "TUHS main list" <tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org>
Sent: 2/6/2021 11:55:08 AM
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Typing tutors
On Fri, Feb 5, 2021 at 9:57 PM Will Senn <will.senn(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I did see mention a while back about a TOPS-10
typing tutor, not unix,
but in the spirit - surely there's some unix history around typing
tutors.
Nah I just learned to push harder on the ASR-33 keys ;-)
Funny, back-in-the-day, the local public HS had a typing class for the
girls, which two of my sisters took. The all-male prep-school where
my dad taught and my brothers and I all went, had nothing. But I had
access to an ASR-33 and just migrated to it.
To this day, my wife (who is a concert pianist/organist) can touch type
but she is amazed at watching me with my 2, 3 or 4 finger style.
Clem
ᐧ
11:29 p.m.
Which, is why we made both of my adult kids learn to touch type.
ᐧ
On Sat, Feb 6, 2021 at 12:22 PM Ron Natalie <ron(a)ronnatalie.com> wrote:
One of the smartest things my mother did was make me
take typing in summer
school one year. Little did she or I knew that being able to type 60WPM
was going to become a very important asset in my eventual career.
------ Original Message ------
From: "Clem Cole" <clemc(a)ccc.com>
To: "Will Senn" <will.senn(a)gmail.com>
Cc: "TUHS main list" <tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org>
Sent: 2/6/2021 11:55:08 AM
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Typing tutors
On Fri, Feb 5, 2021 at 9:57 PM Will Senn <will.senn(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I did see mention a while back about a TOPS-10
typing tutor, not unix,
but in the spirit - surely there's some unix history around typing tutors.
Nah I just learned to push harder on the ASR-33 keys ;-)
Funny, back-in-the-day, the local public HS had a typing class for the
girls, which two of my sisters took. The all-male prep-school where my
dad taught and my brothers and I all went, had nothing. But I had access to
an ASR-33 and just migrated to it.
To this day, my wife (who is a concert pianist/organist) can touch type
but she is amazed at watching me with my 2, 3 or 4 finger style.
Clem
ᐧ
11:33 p.m.
I learned on a manual typewriter in 7th grade, but I got fast on a
keypunch. To this day i don't use the right shift key, because it didn't
work on a keypunch.
At Berkeley, everybody was already a touch typist. That's why vi
commands emphasize lower case letters, especially hjkl which are right
under the home position. The original reason for hjkl was the ADM3A, but
when I added arrow key support to vi and disabled the hardcoded hjkl, a
line of grad students made me put it back.
Mary Ann
On 2/6/21 9:22 AM, Ron Natalie wrote:
One of the smartest things my mother did was make me
take typing in
summer school one year. Little did she or I knew that being able to
type 60WPM was going to become a very important asset in my eventual
career.
------ Original Message ------
From: "Clem Cole" <clemc(a)ccc.com <mailto:clemc@ccc.com>>
To: "Will Senn" <will.senn(a)gmail.com <mailto:will.senn@gmail.com>>
Cc: "TUHS main list" <tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org
<mailto:tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>>
Sent: 2/6/2021 11:55:08 AM
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Typing tutors
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 5, 2021 at 9:57 PM Will Senn <will.senn(a)gmail.com
> <mailto:will.senn@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> I did see mention a while back about a TOPS-10 typing tutor, not
> unix, but in the spirit - surely there's some unix history around
> typing tutors.
>
> Nah I just learned to push harder on the ASR-33 keys ;-)
> Funny, back-in-the-day, the local public HS had a typing class for
> the girls, which two of my sisters took. The all-male prep-school
> where my dad taught and my brothers and I all went, had nothing. But
> I had access to an ASR-33 and just migrated to it.
>
> To this day, my wife (who is a concert pianist/organist) can touch
> type but she is amazed at watching me with my 2, 3 or 4 finger style.
>
> Clem
> ᐧ
11:47 p.m.
Yep. The problem with keypunches and teletypes is that they had a
limit to how fast you could type on them and you could easily outtype
them. The key to being efficient on them was to get into the rhythm of
the maximum speed the machine could accept.
My first terminal I got to use was actually an ADM1. It had the same
arrow keys printed on HJKL as the ADM3. The H and J made sense
(backspace and linefeed for left and down). The others were just
convenient as they were physically adjacent.
To this day, it galls me that emacs uses ^H for help. It's the first
thing I change when I install it.
By the time vi rolled around I had already learned one of the emacs
variants (after a brief stint with a Rand-editor flavored thing called
INed). To this day I don't really have much facility in vi. It used
to freakout my coworkers no end that if there was no emacs on the
machine, I'd just blast through everything using ed. Nice thing about
doing a lot of work in ed: you get very good at regular expressions.
------ Original Message ------
From: "Mary Ann Horton" <mah(a)mhorton.net>
To: tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org
Sent: 2/6/2021 12:33:53 PM
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Typing tutors
At Berkeley, everybody was already a touch typist.
That's why vi
commands emphasize lower case letters, especially hjkl which are right
under the home position. The original reason for hjkl was the ADM3A,
but when I added arrow key support to vi and disabled the hardcoded
hjkl, a line of grad students made me put it back.
7 Feb
7 Feb
12:06 a.m.
On Sat, Feb 6, 2021 at 12:47 PM Ron Natalie <ron(a)ronnatalie.com> wrote:
It used to freakout my coworkers no end that if there
was no emacs on the
machine, I'd just blast through everything using ed. Nice thing about
doing a lot of work in ed: you get very good at regular expressions.
Yep - although there was usually a vi, which is why I stuck with it.
uemacs just sucked. WRT ^H yeah - it also galled me that if you type ^H to
ITS, they knew what you wanted to do and would torment you by telling you
to use DEL. Sigh...
Clem
ᐧ
4:38 a.m.
On Sat, 6 Feb 2021, Mary Ann Horton wrote:
I learned on a manual typewriter in 7th grade, but I
got fast on a
keypunch. To this day i don't use the right shift key, because it didn't
work on a keypunch.
The 026 (ugh!), or the 029?
At Berkeley, everybody was already a touch typist.
That's why vi
commands emphasize lower case letters, especially hjkl which are right
under the home position. The original reason for hjkl was the ADM3A, but
when I added arrow key support to vi and disabled the hardcoded hjkl, a
line of grad students made me put it back.
I'm not surprised :-) We were all playing "rogue" back then. And my
favourite terminal was indeed the ADM-3A; it just seemed to be designed
for Unix, with the ESC key in the right place etc.
I still loathe the VT-220...
-- Dave, a fast two-finger typist (but with pinkie on RETURN)
4:47 a.m.
Den lör 6 feb. 2021 kl 23:39 skrev Dave Horsfall <dave(a)horsfall.org>:
On Sat, 6 Feb 2021, Mary Ann Horton wrote:
I'm probably a youngster in this crowd (no, I'm not calling you old farts,
more like people with a long history I respect and am willing to learn
from). Born in 1980. But I had similar reasons for feeling at home with
hjkl. In the 1980s (I think before I even started school) I got my hands on
what was then called HACK for MS-DOS, which of course later became NetHack.
So by the time I started playing with Linux and other *nixes in 2000, I
didn't have any real learning curve with basic vi usage.
Niklas
At Berkeley, everybody was already a touch
typist. That's why vi
commands emphasize lower case letters, especially hjkl which are right
under the home position. The original reason for hjkl was the ADM3A, but
when I added arrow key support to vi and disabled the hardcoded hjkl, a
line of grad students made me put it back.
I'm not surprised :-) We were all playing "rogue" back then. And my
favourite terminal was indeed the ADM-3A; it just seemed to be designed
for Unix, with the ESC key in the right place etc.
6:25 a.m.
On Sat, Feb 6, 2021 at 5:47 PM Niklas Karlsson <nikke.karlsson(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
I'm probably a youngster in this crowd (no,
I'm not calling you old farts,
In computer circles, that is what "old fart" means.
John Cowan http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan cowan(a)ccil.org
If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing
on my shoulders. --Hal Abelson
more like people with a long history I respect
and am willing to learn
from).
9 Feb
9 Feb
4:20 a.m.
On Sat, 6 Feb 2021, John Cowan wrote:
> I'm probably a youngster in this crowd (no,
I'm not calling you old
> farts, more like people with a long history I respect and am willing
> to learn from).
In computer circles, that is what "old fart"
means.
I know that I'm gonna be outclassed here, but I taught myself BASIC,
ALGOL, and FORTRAN (ugh! well, it was WATFOR then WATFIV) from my school
days in the late 60s onwards.
COBOL tried to be drilled into me, but I firmly rejected it (but for some
odd reason I still know it, but deny all knowledge of it).
-- Dave
4:58 a.m.
In HS COBOL was the only programming class offered. We punched the cards and got overnight
service from the data center for the district. When I was a senior we got an ASR-33 that
talked to a Honeywell at a local uni. With it we could login and run Basic programs.
Real programming (APL, FORTRAN, UCSD Pascal, IBM 360 Assembly) awaited for me at UCSD.
David
On Feb 8, 2021, at 2:20 PM, Dave Horsfall
<dave(a)horsfall.org> wrote:
On Sat, 6 Feb 2021, John Cowan wrote:
> I'm probably a youngster in this crowd
(no, I'm not calling you old > farts, more like people with a long history I
respect and am willing > to learn from).
In computer circles, that is what "old
fart" means.
I know that I'm gonna be outclassed here, but I taught myself BASIC, ALGOL, and
FORTRAN (ugh! well, it was WATFOR then WATFIV) from my school days in the late 60s
onwards.
COBOL tried to be drilled into me, but I firmly rejected it (but for some odd reason I
still know it, but deny all knowledge of it).
-- Dave
5:01 a.m.
On Mon, Feb 8, 2021 at 5:21 PM Dave Horsfall <dave(a)horsfall.org> wrote:
I know that I'm gonna be outclassed here, but I
taught myself BASIC,
ALGOL, and FORTRAN (ugh! well, it was WATFOR then WATFIV) from my school
days in the late 60s onwards.
Many much older and more experienced than I on this list. I'm a relative
youngster that started in the late 1960s. So Dave, I have to say, ditto,
but I will add a couple of assemblers to the early list (360 BAL, HP2000,
and PDP-8 and 10). My father showed me the GE-635 assembler in
probably 1968, but I never managed to write anything meaningful in it.
COBOL tried to be drilled into me, but I firmly rejected it (but for some
odd reason I still know it, but deny all knowledge of it).
Funny, I dodged COBOL, but not PL/1 and APL. With the latter, I maintained
the York/APL interpreter on TSS for a bit. I also saw a number of
languages on the 10's like SAIL, SNOBOL, and over course BLISS. All before
I saw C on the Fifth Edition of UNIX. As I've said before, when I first
saw it, I was not impressed. Little did I know Dennis and Ken would rot my
brain - (and I'm thankful that they did).
Clem
ᐧ
7 Feb
7 Feb
11:43 p.m.
On 2/6/21 2:38 PM, Dave Horsfall wrote:
I hated it when the PC-AT came along and moved Ctrl down and Esc up! I
depend on Ctrl being to the left of A and Esc left of 1, where God
intended them to be! I used a Sun keyboard with a DIN adapter for years,
until I came to SDG&E in 2007 and discovered a cache of USB Sun
keyboards, half with the UNIX layout (yay!) and half with the PC layout
(boo!) Word got around quickly that I liked them, and I wound up with
several UNIX layout Sun keyboards. For good measure, I bought a 10-pack
on eBay, so I'll have spares until the day they peel my cold dead
fingers away from my UNIX layout keyboard.
Mary Ann
On Sat, 6 Feb 2021, Mary Ann Horton wrote:
I had to Google for an image of the 026 - yuck! The image of an 029
matches what I recall.
I learned on a manual typewriter in 7th grade,
but I got fast on a
keypunch. To this day i don't use the right shift key, because it
didn't work on a keypunch.
The 026 (ugh!), or the 029?
At Berkeley,
everybody was already a touch typist. That's why vi
commands emphasize lower case letters, especially hjkl which are
right under the home position. The original reason for hjkl was the
ADM3A, but when I added arrow key support to vi and disabled the
hardcoded hjkl, a line of grad students made me put it back.
I'm not surprised :-) We were all playing "rogue" back then. And my
favourite terminal was indeed the ADM-3A; it just seemed to be
designed for Unix, with the ESC key in the right place etc.
8 Feb
8 Feb
1:28 a.m.
On Sun, Feb 7, 2021 at 12:44 PM Mary Ann Horton <mah(a)mhorton.net> wrote:
A few years ago I got to the point where my wrists just wouldn't take it
anymore.
I invested in an Evoluent vertical mouse (3 buttons! Well, really more than
that, but the three in the "correct" positions were the ones I cared about)
and a Kinesis Advantage keyboard. It took me about a week to learn how to
type on the Kinesis, but I can't imagine going back now. I remapped the
'Caps Lock' key to control so that I've got a Control key where one is
supposed to be, but the Esc key is a bit far away. It's not excessively so,
but it is mildly annoying. Still, RSI no longer wakes me up at night, so on
balance the tradeoff has been worth it.
Some colleagues have suggested learning the Dvorak layout; I splurged for
the Kinesis with the double QWERTY/Dvorak keycaps and a mode key and
(relevant to the question here) I found some typing tutor program that
would ostensibly teach me typing again. But like Morse code, it's never
stuck.
- Dan C.
I'm not
surprised :-) We were all playing "rogue" back then. And my
favourite terminal was indeed the ADM-3A; it just seemed to be
designed for Unix, with the ESC key in the right place etc.
I hated it when the PC-AT came along and moved Ctrl down and Esc up! I
depend on Ctrl being to the left of A and Esc left of 1, where God
intended them to be! I used a Sun keyboard with a DIN adapter for years,
until I came to SDG&E in 2007 and discovered a cache of USB Sun
keyboards, half with the UNIX layout (yay!) and half with the PC layout
(boo!) Word got around quickly that I liked them, and I wound up with
several UNIX layout Sun keyboards. For good measure, I bought a 10-pack
on eBay, so I'll have spares until the day they peel my cold dead
fingers away from my UNIX layout keyboard.
3:32 a.m.
On 07/02/2021 12:43, Mary Ann Horton wrote (in part):
I hated it when the PC-AT came along and moved Ctrl
down and Esc up! I
depend on Ctrl being to the left of A and Esc left of 1, where God
intended them to be! I used a Sun keyboard with a DIN adapter for
years, until I came to SDG&E in 2007 and discovered a cache of USB Sun
keyboards, half with the UNIX layout (yay!) and half with the PC
layout (boo!) Word got around quickly that I liked them, and I wound
up with several UNIX layout Sun keyboards. For good measure, I bought
a 10-pack on eBay, so I'll have spares until the day they peel my cold
dead fingers away from my UNIX layout keyboard.
My Sun UNIX layout keyboards (and
mice) work quite well with my Macs. I
share your sentiments.
N.
5:17 a.m.
On Sun, Feb 7, 2021, 16:34 Nemo Nusquam <cym224(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 07/02/2021 12:43, Mary Ann Horton wrote (in part):
There was an early Apple ADB keyboard with control in the "right" place. I
had two and I used them for many years with ADB to USB adapters until the
keyboards became unreliable.
drakaware.com makes a variety of keyboard adapters, including a Sun to USB
if you just can't give up your Type 5 (or type 4!)
-Henry
I hated it when the PC-AT came along and moved
Ctrl down and Esc up! I
depend on Ctrl being to the left of A and Esc left of 1, where God
intended them to be! I used a Sun keyboard with a DIN adapter for
years, until I came to SDG&E in 2007 and discovered a cache of USB Sun
keyboards, half with the UNIX layout (yay!) and half with the PC
layout (boo!) Word got around quickly that I liked them, and I wound
up with several UNIX layout Sun keyboards. For good measure, I bought
a 10-pack on eBay, so I'll have spares until the day they peel my cold
dead fingers away from my UNIX layout keyboard.
My Sun UNIX layout keyboards (and
mice) work quite well with my Macs. I
share your sentiments.
6:56 a.m.
On Sun, Feb 7, 2021, 18:55 Steve Nickolas <usotsuki(a)buric.co> wrote:
On Sun, 7 Feb 2021, Henry Bent wrote:
Actually an M0116, same layout but intended for a Mac. I can't remember
where they came from originally - maybe a IIci or something of that vintage?
-Henry
There was an early Apple ADB keyboard with
control in the "right" place.
I
had two and I used them for many years with ADB
to USB adapters until the
keyboards became unreliable.
The one from the Apple IIgs?
-uso.
11:15 a.m.
The first Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) keyboard was for the Apple IIgs:
https://deskthority.net/wiki/Apple_Desktop_Bus_Keyboard
and that lead to the same keyboard layout for the Mac II ADB keyboards (the Mac 128K, Fat
Mac, and Mac Plus did not use ADB for their keyboards):
https://deskthority.net/wiki/Apple_M0116
That was the last Apple keyboard with the Control and Escape keys in the correct
positions, particularly for those of us using Macs as terminals to Unix systems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Keyboard (a reasonably full history).
I took a typing class in 7th grade (early 1970s) on heavy, manual Smith-Corona
typewriters, more or less contemporaneously with learning to program in BASIC on a DG Nova
batch system, using non-punched Hollerith cards - we marked them with #2 pencils, and woe
is you if you didn't fill in the dots well enough
for your cards to be read by the card reader: correct your cards, and back of the batch
queue for you!
After that, it was years pounding TTY ASR-33s (interactive BASIC, rather than batch),
Hazeltine h1500, LSI ADM-3a, Heathkit h19, HP 2621, the occasional DEC VT100 or VT102 ...
after being hired in July 1988 by Apple, I've typed on basically nothing but Apple
keyboards, with very occasional flirtations with third-party ADB or USB keyboards.
I had a bad bout of repetitive strain injury (specifically, ulnar nerve syndrome - a
cousin of carpal tunnel syndrome) in my left hand in the early 1990s, partly from pounding
keyboards too hard for too long, and partly (I think) from wearing a Casio digital watch
with the watchband cinched too tight (I hate floppy watch). I made three changes, after a
month of PT and silly amounts of ibuprofen: velcro watch band/strap for near-infinite fine
adjustment of fit (so as not to constrict my wrist), neoprene wrist rests in front of my
keyboards, and training myself not to pound the keys so hard.
I still have a small stock of Apple M0116 keyboards, though I've capitulated to the
IBM PC "typist" keyboard layout with Control in the incorrect position;
I've been using the Apple A1243 (US) Aluminum USB extended keyboard (with some
replacement stock) since its introduction in 2007, and I'm moderately happy with it:
thin keyboard, no wrist rest required, light touch - no key pounding required. The A1843
(optionally wireless USB keyboard with "lightning" port and no USB hub) is an OK
replacement, but I use it strictly wired. Laptop keyboards also want a lighter touch these
days.
I'm glad I took the typing course, but I'm hardly a full touch typist. However,
I'm fast enough that I prefer vi to emacs, as I've previously described.
I'm not perfect, but that's what the backspace or DEL key is for (and, with a
properly programmed tty line discipline: ^W (word erase)). Very glad I was already
conversant with computers when it came time to write essays for UCB freshman English
classes. That was also impetus to learn nroff.
Erik
11:33 a.m.
On Sun, 7 Feb 2021, Erik E. Fair wrote:
The first Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) keyboard was for the
Apple IIgs:
https://deskthority.net/wiki/Apple_Desktop_Bus_Keyboard
and that lead to the same keyboard layout for the Mac II ADB keyboards (the
Mac 128K, Fat Mac, and Mac Plus did not use ADB for their keyboards):
https://deskthority.net/wiki/Apple_M0116
That was the last Apple keyboard with the Control and Escape keys in the
correct positions, particularly for those of us using Macs as terminals to
Unix systems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Keyboard (a reasonably full history).
I have an Apple Keyboard II, an M0487. The layout is kinda braindead,
though good enough for its purpose, given that I only have the Mac it's
connected to because I need a host for the //e card.
I prefer the actual //e layout. That's pretty close to the M layout, but
~` is on the bottom about where Left Windows is on modern keyboards, and
ESC, Ctrl and Caps Lock are where you guys would probably expect them. ;)
But I don't really mind Ctrl in the corners.
-uso.
9:54 p.m.
On 2/7/21 11:33 PM, Steve Nickolas wrote:
have an Apple Keyboard II, an M0487. The layout is
kinda braindead,
though good enough for its purpose, given that I only have the Mac
it's connected to because I need a host for the //e card.
I prefer the actual //e layout. That's pretty close to the M layout,
but ~` is on the bottom about where Left Windows is on modern
keyboards, and ESC, Ctrl and Caps Lock are where you guys would
probably expect them. ;)
But I don't really mind Ctrl in the corners.
-uso.
I have a //e, I can't stand the layout :) - foreign to my PC & Modern
Mac experience. I keep hitting Caps Lock instead of control and delete
doesn't work - it's left arrow?! But I definitely like the way they
feel. Very satisfying to get feedback on the key presses, reminds me of
the IBM PC. I'm no fan of my macs' chicklets, but I'm used to them and
they're worth the tradeoff of having macness over non-macness. My
favorite keyboard though, amongst my current hardware, is my Lenovo T430
Thinkpad, clean and clear and not mushy at all - too bad it's not a mac.
11:29 a.m.
On Sun, Feb 07, 2021 at 04:32:56PM -0500, Nemo Nusquam wrote:
My Sun UNIX layout keyboards (and mice) work quite
well with my Macs. I
share your sentiments.
Most of the bespoke mechanical keyboard makers will offer a dipswitch for
what happens to the left of the A, and with an option to print the
right value there, my keyboards work quite well the right way.
I did use the Sun Type5 USB Unix layout for quite some years, but I
always found it a but mushy, and liked it better switching back to
mechanical keyboards with the proper layout.
9 Feb
9 Feb
2:41 a.m.
On 8 Feb 2021, at 4:43 am, Mary Ann Horton <mah(a)mhorton.net> wrote:
I hated it when the PC-AT came along and moved Ctrl down and Esc up! I depend on Ctrl
being to the left of A and Esc left of 1, where God intended them to be! I used a Sun
keyboard with a DIN adapter for years, until I came to SDG&E in 2007 and discovered a
cache of USB Sun keyboards, half with the UNIX layout (yay!) and half with the PC layout
(boo!) Word got around quickly that I liked them, and I wound up with several UNIX layout
Sun keyboards. For good measure, I bought a 10-pack on eBay, so I'll have spares
until the day they peel my cold dead fingers away from my UNIX layout keyboard.
As a long time emacs user that change drives me nuts but thankfully re-mapping
makes things usable - cap-lock -> ctrl, swap left-alt and Windows-key (meta).
BTW if you like buckling springs Unicomp make a Sun layout keyboard that looks
okay - https://www.pckeyboard.com/page/product/40PSA (larger image at
https://www.pckeyboard.com/mm5/graphics/00000001/Sun%20Keyboard1000x1000_80… )
I’ve been using their IBM layout keyboards for years (mostly on Macs) and found them
reliable and great to type on. But YMMV of course. If I were in the USA I’d get one
of these Sun layout boards in an instant but shipping one to Australia costs more the
keyboard which irks me enough to say no (at least for the time being).
7 Feb
7 Feb
12:56 a.m.
On Feb 6, 2021, at 9:22 AM, Ron Natalie
<ron(a)ronnatalie.com> wrote:
One of the smartest things my mother did was make me take typing in summer school one
year. Little did she or I knew that being able to type 60WPM was going to become a very
important asset in my eventual career.
My mother also insisted that I take typing as a summer school class because “In
college you will have to type papers for your professors”. She having been a professor of
English at Perdue University.
I took the class and failed because I would backspace and overstrike with the correct
letter.
After I got to college I used UCSD Pascal and so typing a backspace to erase the previous
letter was fine.
I returned to HS and told the typing instructor that I now type 40 WPM flawlessly because
I use a computer, not something with paper. He was not impressed.
The HS replaced the IBM Selectrics with cheap PC clones the next year.
David
9 Feb
9 Feb
3:50 a.m.
On Sat, 6 Feb 2021, David Barto wrote:
The HS replaced the IBM Selectrics with cheap PC
clones the next year.
The Selectric was the best typewriter ever; it just felt "natural". I was
about in love with our secretary as she was with her typewriter :-)
No; I happened to meet some other bird...
-- Dave
10:29 p.m.
On 2/8/21 1:50 PM, Dave Horsfall wrote:
On Sat, 6 Feb 2021, David Barto wrote:
I totally agree about the Selectric keyboard. As a grad student, I
looked for keyboards that felt like a Selectric, and considered
considered it a requirement to have tactile feedback when I hit a key.
Sadly now, "chiclet" keyboards are considered the gold standard, and two
thumbs on a phone is the new Mavis Beacon.
The HS replaced the IBM Selectrics with cheap PC
clones the next year.
The Selectric was the best typewriter ever; it just felt "natural".
-- Dave
1412
days inactive
1415
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26 comments
15 participants
participants (15)
-
Andrew Newman -
Clem Cole -
Dan Cross -
Dave Horsfall -
David Barto -
Doug McIntyre -
Erik E. Fair -
Henry Bent -
John Cowan -
Mary Ann Horton -
Nemo Nusquam -
Niklas Karlsson -
Ron Natalie -
Steve Nickolas -
Will Senn