[HECnet] Worth getting a "VMS" keyboard?

[Brian Schenkenberger, VAXman-]

Sampsa Laine <sampsa at mac.com> writes:

My idea is to plug one of these into a Macbook Pro with a USB adapter, =
failing that, could I just get a 100+ key USB keyboard, do some tweaking =
and relabel the buttons?

OK.   With the Mac keyboards, you have a reasonable approximation of the
LK-style keyboard; at least, as far as the numeric keypad is concerned.
You have three keys above the enter like on the LK-keyboards, not that
stupidly large [+] key like on all the IBM keyboards.   IBM thought that
their PC was an adding machine. :)   With the Mac keyboard keypad, one
can use VMS utilities (editors, debugger, etc.) which have functions
defined on the numeric keypad without having to muck about with mapping
some other keyboard key -- unnatural for those accustomed to the LK --
for the fused [,] and [-] into the [+} on the IBM style keyboards.

If you're looking for the alternate keypad between the QWERTY and the
numberic (arrows, [HELP], [Do], etc.) then, you'll want the LK-style 
keyboard.   If you use Linux on your x86 box -- and you should ;) --
a few Xmodmap entries and or Xresources entries will give you pretty
much full use of the LK-sytle keyboard.   On the Mac, it's been quite
a while since I've plugged an LK-style keyboard into one -- I recall
that it worked pretty much out-of-the-box.

Now, if only the xterms built for Linux and Mac would better support
the myriad escape sequences that define a VT.   Recently, and I would
probably have to patch and edit source and build it myself, I've been
wanting DECELR/DECSLE in my xterm.   Happily, I can simply issue the
$ CREATE/TERMINAL/... command and get a well behaved DECterm that'll
do this for me.

-- 
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker       VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG

Well I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.