Jay Maynard wrote: >I'll quibble slightly about the keyboard layout: the DEC LK201 (for >the VT220) beat the 104-key PC keyboard to market.
DEC's LK201 popularized inverted T cursor navigation keys -- and that was/is very good. DEC also landed on 6 keys above the inverted T (in a 2x3 arrangement), and that was a pretty good decision too. I'd award 1.5 "keyboard history points" to DEC for these decisions. However, in my view the LK201 missed the mark in many significant respects compared to the 1980s-90s standard IBM 101/102 key PC keyboard layout, a layout that still heavily influences today's keyboards. Here are some examples: 1. Weirdly the LK201 had awful positioning for the CTRL key, next to CAPS LOCK. (Nobody at DEC used vi or WordStar?) Hopefully we can all agree by now that CTRL and CAPS LOCK have no business being next to each other. The IBM 101/102 key PC keyboard layout put the CTRL keys (2 of them) where they should be. (Of course if you want the right CTRL key to act as 3270 ENTER, no problem.) 2. IBM put the ESC key in a "grade separated" position in the upper left. Thank goodness! 3. DEC put the "inverted T" directly below some other navigation keys with no gap. That just wasn't right. IBM left a gap between the "inverted T" keys and the other navigation keys (Insert, Home, PgUp, etc.), a much better decision. 4. The LK201 lumped the ; ' \ keys (and their shifted counterparts) together, to the right of the L key. That was not good. One key between the home row and ENTER is great, but two is too many. IBM moved the \ key to a better position, above the ENTER key. 5. I think IBM's function key layout makes much more sense. IBM used 12 function keys (in standard PC layout; there was a 24 function key variant) in groups of 4 and (importantly) right aligned them with the main section of the keyboard. As far as I can tell DEC randomly filled their top row: no grouping consistency, and no alignment with the main keyboard section. I think it's easier for touch typists to find IBM's function keys. I agree that the world really didn't/doesn't need Windows or (lately) Copilot keys. The Apple Mac keyboard has 4 (!) modifier keys to the left of the space bar: Fn, Ctrl, Option, and Command. That's more than enough already. (Command-Shift-Option-... what's that key sequence?) And that's supposedly the *simpler* desktop platform. The IBM 101/102 key PC keyboard layout settled on 3 modifier keys: Shift, Ctrl, and Alt. (Or "3 1/2" with Alt Gr.) All 3 modifier keys were duplicated left and right (at least in the 101 key variant; Alt/Alt Gr was a bit different). I really wish the industry stuck with 3 (or 3 1/2) modifier keys. But now Windows laptops/desktops are up to...5? 6? Yuck. I'm ignoring the LK201's touch feel...which wasn't good. :-( ————— Timothy Sipples Senior Architect Digital Assets, Industry Solutions, and Cybersecurity IBM Z/LinuxONE, Asia-Pacific sipp...@sg.ibm.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
