Re: [OT?] LCD/LED Keyboard

[Alex Bochannek]

It appears my response from this morning didn't make it to the list, so 
here it is again. I apologize if this results in a duplicate.

Alex.

Since I did look into all the issues before that are mentioned in this
thread, let me respond to them.
The applications of dynamic keycaps are pretty broad. To people on this
list the need to remember different keyboard layouts, dead-keys, compose
sequences, level and group shifts, are a daily necessity and could be
greatly simplified. The counter-argument is often that touch-typists 
don't
look at the keys anyway, which is under closer examination actually not
true. Even a proficient touch-typist will have to find less frequently 
used
key combinations and often will end up writing a key sequence cheat sheet
or mark up keycaps. The benefit for learning a new keyboard layout or for
accessing rarely used characters is obvious. I very occasionally would 
like
to be able to access Cyrillic or Greek characters, yet have to relearn 
the
layout or use an on-screen display to find them every time.

Another application I was eluding to was what I termed modal (or complex)
input environments. What I mean by that is that despite the efforts of
human interface researchers, many computer programs constantly shift
between different input modes and key sequences change meaning based on 
it.
For UNIX users, VI and Emacs are a painfully obvious example. But even 
less
extreme cases come to mind. When hitting the ALT key in Windows, the 
menus
of your window become accessible through keyboard shortcuts. If the 'F' 
key
would then read "File" or maybe 'F4' would read "Quit",  shortcuts would 
be
more easily learned and user efficiency would go up. If you remember the
WPS word-processing keyboards DEC used to ship or the lay-on templates 
that
came with every copy of Wordstar, the utility of this too should be
obvious. After all, there is a reason why we have some keys already 
labeled
'Home' or 'Backspace'.

The issues of implementation technology, cost and price came up. I talked
to the eInk folks a while back and while their technology looks like it 
is
going into the right direction, matrix addressable eInk isn't quite there
yet. LCD, OLED, and related technologies seem more practical, but power
consumption would be a problem. In a first generation product a separate
power supply could be acceptable, but most users would not want to deal
with it. Cost is uncertain and will be necessarily much higher than for a
regular keyboard. Off-setting the initial R&D through the price of the
product seems like a bad idea since that would increase the price
differential even more. The corollary being that a large company has a
better chance of manufacturing such a device successfully than a small 
one.
In terms of price, I have talked to numerous people and the general
consensus seems to be that people would expect to pay more that US$100 
and
less than US$1,000. The cost savings are hard to quantify, but in the 
case
of a multi-national IT manager, not having to stock different devices for
different locales, does introduce a tangible saving.
While I am happy to have an opportunity to share my thoughts on this 
topic,
I am not sure how appropriate further discussion on the Unicode list 
would
be. If anybody who reads this is in a position to more seriously
investigate this topic, please contact me directly since it is an area in
which I am greatly interested.
Alex.