Lisp machine, its keys

I was perfectly satisfied with the Knight keyboards -- Shift, Control (remapped to the eighth bit so upper and lower control-whatever were different things), Meta (which, by the way, is probably what inspired the Alt key on IBMPC keyboards), Top (old Control). Nine bits, no waiting for escape sequences.

I think the lispmachine keyboards theoretically used a full 16 bits. There weren't many applications which really wanted that many modes (and/or mode-combinations) available simultaneously, but I seem to remember that a few CAD tools used 'em all.

Let's see... what was the key combination to buzz someone into the AI Lab from your desk? Or the one to call the elevator to the top floor? (I'm not sure the building managers knew about that hack... at least they didn't admit it if so.)

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#5 posted by technogeek , February 6, 2009 10:08 AM

Actually, I think the Lispm's keyboard could distinguish between the left-hand and right-hand versions of those modifiers too...

Control-shift-hyper-super-meta-Greek-Cokebottle!

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#6 posted by semiotix , February 6, 2009 10:13 AM

"Tech support, how can I help you?"

"Um, yeah, I've got a Word document open and I want the text to have this sort of bold character... how do I do that?"

"Just press Alt-B. That will bold the text."

"No, that's not exactly what I mean... I don't want the text to actually be bold per se, I just want it to have the sense of boldness. You know? Like, I want it to convey the underlying essence of bold without necessarily being any darker."

"Oh, then press Meta-Alt-B."

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#7 posted by tubgull , February 6, 2009 11:04 AM

Does the "Rubout" button bring up your naughty photos?

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#8 posted by georgelazenby , February 6, 2009 11:58 AM

Shaka!

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#9 posted by etmthree , February 6, 2009 6:42 PM

We have lost so much...