On 25 March 2011 07:15, Ken Wesson <kwess...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 12:36 AM, ultranewb <pineapple.l...@yahoo.com> wrote: [...] >> One other difference with APL is that they removed the old complaint >> of "special characters and keyboards" by changing it to pure standard >> ascii characters. Thing is, I don't particularly like this aspect. I >> much prefer old APL symbols to the new string of plain ascii >> characters which I find ugly. The irony in all of this is that >> Iverson was before his time in creating a language with special >> symbols - some people didn't "get it," you needed special equipment >> and character sets and fonts, etc. So they removed this old complaint >> with J... just with the advent of unicode, which actually allows for >> such things quite easily. > > Er ... not exactly. It may allow representing the special characters > in disk files and network traffic in a manner that will survive being > passed through tool chains and among web users, but I'm aware of no > magic Unicode floppy disc I can stick into my machine, run "make > install" (or "setup.exe") off, and wind up able to *type* the special > characters by simply looking down at my keyboard, finding one of them, > and pushing it. :) > > So it'd mean a lot of annoying alt+numpad foolery, copy-paste, or > memorizing arcane emacs-style chords. > > Maybe in another ten years keyboards will have become multitouch > screens that can serve various other purposes, and when used as > keyboards can have the glyphs changed in software; then maybe you can > just task switch to your J IDE and watch your keyboard F-key and > numpad symbols change as determined by the keymaps defined for the > application with the input focus, or something; and this won't all > cost a ridiculous amount of money.
Well, except for the part about not costing a "ridiculous amount of money", this might be what you're looking for :) http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus/ > But that day has not yet arrived. And besides, a touch-screen keyboard > can't be typed on by feel, unless they add software-controlled shape > shifting or something. or unless a separate little screen is embedded in each real key as in the optimus maximus. > I think there are experimental display devices > for the blind that could be put under a flexible oled touchscreen to > make a fully programmable keyboard that actually had keys you could > feel and push down, but that's even longer to make practical and > inexpensive. -- Michael Wood <esiot...@gmail.com> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
