Re: Standardization and Diversity

[Dan Strychalski <dski@ms17.hinet.net>]

Steve Cohen <stevecoh@mcs.com> wrote (and yes, it's on-topic) --

>  Just wondering, Dan.  Do you suppose your way of working is more or less
> prone to inducing carpal-tunnel syndrome?  I would suspect it would be
> less so.  I myself have never felt comfortable dragging a mouse all over
> creation and would imagine that if I were able to accomplish the same
> thing just using the keyboard, I might be a little more comfortable.

Before I respond to Steve's question, I'd like to make it clear that I'm
not advocating a particular product. Any system that makes effective use
of the ASCII Ctrl-key combinations, any system that makes it possible to
carry out all command functions through those keystrokes (with ASCII
follow-up keystrokes where appropriate), is all right with me.

A program using such a system appeared for the IBM PC in mid-1982. That
program was already popular on other systems, but few users of those
systems were eager to "go IBM" (a message in the program shows that not
even its creators were eager to go IBM). The program had competition,
including two IBM-labeled offerings; how many others at first, I do not
know. I've seen that program called a late entry into that early market.
I've seen its vendor called seriously inept at marketing. By Thanksgiving
Day of 1982, in a field of twenty competing products, that program had a
market share of at least 75%. Its share on other systems was higher.

Dear, oh dear. What's a monopolist to do?

(Oo-oo-WEE! I just found descriptions of the IBM-labeled entries.
According to Chris DeVoney in _IBM's Personal Computer_, Second Edition
[Que, 1983], entry X "makes full use of the Personal Computer's special-
function and cursor-control keys" [p. 256], while entry Y "takes full
advantage of the Personal Computer's keyboard. All ten function keys are
used," and "a function-key template is also included" [p. 259].)

Ah, the first half of the eighties. Microsoft copying DRI, Apple copying
Xerox, DRI copying Apple, Microsoft copying Apple, Borland copying
Lotus.... A regular copyfest. Now, Borland had programming tools that
copied our seventy-five-percenter, and a few one-person offerings with
limited capabilities copied it as well, but in big-name mass-market
offerings, not only was there nothing that copied its particular
keystroke assignments, there was nothing, NOTHING that used more than a
handful of ASCII Ctrl keystrokes (if that many) in any way at all.

Meantime, our seventy-five-percenter's vendor had all kinds of internal
squabbles, lost developers left and right, couldn't improve its best
seller in a timely fashion, and sorta... faded.

As did the main-block Ctrl-key combinations. They just sat there mostly
dead in the command interpreter and all utilities, shells, and apps that
came to the attention of the computing public at large. "I thought it was
a computer thing," a WordPerfect user who later saw the light tells me.

Remember, Mitchell Kapor of Lotus and Pete Peterson of WordPerfect warned
us about Microsoft in the mid-eighties. John Cassidy wrote in the New
Yorker that others voiced concerns before that. Does anyone seriously
think Gates just coasted complacently along all those years?

ASCII Ctrl-key combinations were to reappear, and with telling effect.
Take a guess when and where. I'll tell ya at the end of this post.

Back to your question, Steve. Sorry to digress.

When I first read about carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) I had been doing my
keyboard thing for many years, and I was incredulous. By now I'm
convinced that CTS and other forms of repetitive strain (or stress)
injury (RSI, also known as cumulative trauma disorder [CTD]) are real,
but I still haven't had a hint of any such problem myself.

Current hardware and software design conventions clearly contribute to
the incidence of RSI. Constant use of excessive force (keyboards with
"keyclick" and "positive tactile feedback"), overuse of one finger
(mouse-intensive operation), and frequent bending of the wrists (bottom-
corner modifier keys, keystrokes involving modifier and function keys)
are often cited as factors contributing to RSI.

Someone on the technical writers' mailing list once ended a message with
"Boy, is my mouse finger tired," bringing on a flood of "me too"
messages, descriptions of RSI experiences, and recommendations for
alternative pointing devices. I suggested judicious use of the keyboard
and was roundly flamed -- NOT for any reason connected with RSI, but
simply for being "behind the times." (I did get one or two private
messages of agreement.)

Repetitive strain injuries are often referred to as "typing injuries."
Somehow I suspect this is a misnomer. Somehow I suspect a class-action
suit by RSI sufferers against the computer industry biggies would not be
out of order.

Maybe I'm not susceptible to RSI (it appears that some people are), and
maybe, by sheer luck and orneriness, I've simply done everything right:

 - I like quiet keyboards with low activation pressure, and I type with a
   light touch. Some people say "keyclick" helps prevent RSI by signaling
   your motor system when to release a key; it could be that I get that
   feedback from the screen (this requires a fast OS, of course ;-).

 - The load is distributed evenly among my fingers, except for my left
   pinky, which gets very heavy use but seems to be assisted by the
   muscle in the blade of the hand, keeping tendon movement down (CTS is
   said to be caused by pressure of the tendons on the median nerve).

 - I never bend my wrists more than is necessary to hit the Shift keys. I
   don't often hit Return (a.k.a. "Enter," an IBMism), and I almost never
   hit Esc, Tab, or Backspace; I use Ctrl-M, Ctrl-[, Ctrl-I, and Ctrl-H,
   which produce the same ASCII codes as those keys (though some programs
   have to be adjusted to make the Ctrl keystrokes work right).

Almost forgot: I do not use any kind of pointing device, except when left
with no choice, as I sometimes am on the W95 machine at the office.

Whatever your main command-invoking modifier key is, it must sit where
you can hold it down comfortably while hitting any letter key. For
reasons I've explained, I prefer Ctrl. I can see some logic in having
Ctrl keys below and just a tiny bit further out than the inside edges of
the C and M keys (assuming U.S. QWERTY), and if I come across a keyboard
with remappable keys in these positions I might try it, but Ctrl next to
A, where it was on almost all computer keyboards before IBM released the
"enhanced" AT keyboard in April 1986, suits me just fine, as long as the
operating environment doesn't disable ASCII Ctrl keystrokes or dictate
what they do in application programs.

After being studiously ignored by all the big-name players for a decade
or so, ASCII Ctrl keystrokes re-emerged in the command-line recall and
editing utility and the full-screen editor included with a system called
DR-DOS.

Dan Strychalski <dski@ms17.hinet.net>, coming to you from HiNet Mail
Server #17, a SPARC system running SunOS 5.6 (and responding to ASCII
Ctrl-key combinations much the same ways my MS/PC DOS word processors,
text editors, vector-graphic drawing program, and browser respond).