I can imagine some nutty fanatical CS prof (like me) saying, "If you want TRUE platform independence, then IGNORE all realities of the computer; write your program for an imaginary computer that would be perfect for your needs; then map the keyboard, etc. over to the layout that is present on the real world computer." Is that the way that it happened? Or was there some computer that actually HAD those goofy keys? (There were eventually some aftermarket add-on keyboards for the PC for WordPervert.) Please do NOT interpret this as a defence for MSWeird!