Re: Unit Scaling Prefixes: (was Birthday Wish)

[Rick Tarara <rbtarara@SPRYNET.COM>]

Despite all that has been said here, one can buy keyboards that can be
programmed.  I have one where the keyboard can have a number of keys
programmed as macro's.  So a keyboard could be designed that has a series of
extra keys that could be programmed to access a system font (Symbol) and
insert such into a number of programs (especially an Office Suite).

If one uses Word (other word processors as well--I suspect) you can setup a
number of key combinations to print any symbol, including the Greek letters.
The Alt-character sequence is undefined in Word for many of the letters and
can be setup so that for example Alt-A prints an alpha, etc.

Rick

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Richard W. Tarara
Department of Chemistry & Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN 46556
219-284-4664
rtarara@saintmarys.edu

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-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Schoch <pschoch@NAC.NET>
To: PHYS-L@LISTS.NAU.EDU <PHYS-L@LISTS.NAU.EDU>
Date: Thursday, April 15, 1999 4:00 PM
Subject: Re: Unit Scaling Prefixes: (was Birthday Wish)


> OK,
>
> You type in a letter from your keyboard, and its string of 1's and 0's
> goes through the Op. Sys. and is interpreted.  If you change your
> default font on your machine, you MAY be able to actually type in any
> alphabet available on the machine.  That is the key here -- the font
> style must be available and displayable on the machine.
>
> Have you seen a Chinese computer with a pseudo-Chinese keyboard?  The
> thing is a mess, it is complicated, and it doesn't work very well.
>
> You will also note that the Symbol font doesn't support all of the
> symbols one may need.  In some implementations it is also NOT TrueType,
> which leands to a totally diferent set of problems.
>
> So, you would need a tremendously huge keyboard, all computers to be
> equipped with all the possible permutations of the font you require, and
> all platforms to support the keyboard and the font styles.
>
> Oh, by the way, I am new to the list.  My name is Peter Schoch and I
> teach Physics, Computer Information Systems, Astronomy, and Differential
> Equations at Sussex County Community College in Newton NJ.
>
> paul o johnson wrote:
> > Now wait a minute, Phil. All applications by all developers interpret the
A key as
> > the Roman letter A in English fonts and as the Greek letter alpha in
Symbol font,
> > do they not? I routinely use only three word processing applications, but
this is
> > true in all three of them: Microsoft Word, Microsoft Powerpoint, and
Adobe
> > Pagemaker. When I want a sigma, I type S, select it and change it to
Symbol font,
> > and I get a sigma. To my knowledge, all applications use the same
relationship
> > between English and Greek letters.
> >
> > But even if they didn't, all applications would necessarily interpret a
separate
> > alpha key as alpha, etc.
> >
> > What am I missing?
> >
> > poj
> >
> > Phil Parker wrote:
> >
> > > > Date:    Mon, 12 Apr 1999 09:00:14 -0500
> > > > From:    paul o johnson <pojhome@FLASH.NET>
> > > >
> > > > Why doesn't someone invent a scientific keyboard having separate keys
for the
> > > > more common Greek letters?
> > > Because it wouldn't help; how Greek letters are represented internally
varies
> > > from one application to another -- there's no standard.  If there were,
such
> > > a keyboard would be quite helpful.
> > >
> > > ---------------------------------------------
> > > Phil Parker        pparker@twsuvm.uc.twsu.edu
> > > Random quote for this second:
> > >   Optimization hinders evolution.