While I also agree with your ergonomical comment in principal, I have found both for myself as well as many other people I have worked with that they will inevitably look at the keyboard as soon as they move outside the standard graphical keys they are all used to. I myself have been in situations where I had to switch keyboard layouts (as well as actual physical key arrangement) several times a day and just finding something like an ampersand or a dollar sign proved difficult. The immediacy of having the correct symbol printed on the key I am supposed to hit is, in my opinion, superior to having to derive the physical key location from an on-screen rendition of the keyboard. Not that the latter isn't useful and I do not doubt that it works better for some people.
Another area of application that I already eluded to in my previous posting is the use of function keys. Since sufficiently complex, graphical applications frequently remap keys including the standard graphical keys, their users will replace the keycaps with often times color-coded keys that have symbols in addition to letters printed on them. I have seen this in different business fields including finance and A/V.
Alex.
--On Friday, July 25, 2003 11:44:21 AM -0700 Kenneth Whistler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Count me among the people who wouldn't.
