> -----Original Message-----
>
> I don’t mind the “stiffness” of the WP-2 keyboard, but I can’t stand the
> “ghosting characters” issue. I’ve been through about four different WP-
> 2s, and all of them would randomly insert characters when I was
> typing. Absolutely inexcusable for a dedicated word processor.
I've also had this issue - I bought one for note-taking, which it seemed ideal
for with the quieter keyboard (although I don't like the feel compared with an
m100), and was very disappointed the first time I actually tried typing fast
and it was inserting extra characters.
I asked about it here and nobody else had experienced it, so I bought another
one. Same issue.
If it helps with troubleshooting and/or creating a ROM-based fix as John
alluded to, I found that the characters are not random, but always follow
specific sequences. I don't have mine with me right now but I could quickly do
some typing once I get home and follow up this post with the common typos it
creates - they're easy enough for me to reproduce, I just can't remember them
off the top of my head.
I'm guessing that it's related to incorrectly decoding the keyboard output when
too many keys are down at once (I think three). Analyzing my own typing
process, I see that never having to type on a mechanical typewriter made me
never have to work on being fast while pressing and releasing each key in
sequence to prevent jamming. I'm often pressing sequences of two or three keys
nearly at once - they make contact in the sequence of the letters needed, but
two or three of them could be closed at any given time because I haven't
released them yet.
Most of the typos can be fixed with search and replace, because they are
predictable, but one which I do remember well (because it's particularly
annoying) is when I type 'in ' (I-N-SPACE) the wp-2 inserts an up-arrow
keystroke after the space. You glance down to find that everything you typed
after that space is being inserted in the middle of the previous line... GRRRR.
This doesn't happen if you just hit I N SPACE individually, even fairly
quickly, but if you sort of chord them the way I type, it happens quite
repeatably.
(I should note that I type the same way on every keyboard and this is the only
machine I've ever had this problem on. M100 and T200 handle it just fine. I
don't know if it's a ROM problem or if it's something weird about the way the
keyboard matrix is laid out or what...)
jim
