lk401 keyboard protocol? - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

22 Feb 2004

Kevin Handy &lt;kth(a)srv.net&gt; wrote:

...
  So those thinks plugged into IBM mainframes that look
a lot like 
 keyboards, are not
 keyboards, because they transmit EBCDIC? And those things on those old 
 teletypes
 aren't either because they use BAUDOUT? 
I knew someone was going to ask about those! :-)  Well, those are Classic and
therefore OK too.  My fundamental points are:

1. Every person on Earth must be required to know the fundamental principles of
   Computer Science, including the principles of character coding.

2. People must realise (just like ancient pagans did) that codes are more
   primary and more fundamental than character shapes.  To illustrate my point:
   most people believe that letter 'A' is fundamentally a tent with a bar
   between the slopes, and that 1000001 is one computer representation of it.
   This is what I am challenging, I argue that letter 'A' is fundamentally
   1000001 and that the shape with two slopes and a bar between them is merely
   one possible representation of this fundamental 7-bit code, a representation
   that is a passing fad of a society that uses handwriting, printing, paper,
   and other barbaric antiques like this instead of directly transmitting binary
   codes from one computer or brain to another.

3. Keyboards, just like all other tools, need to be viewed in this light: it is
   not a device for entering a certain set of graphic characters, it is a device
   for entering a certain set of codes in some charset.  This is what the IFCTF
   keyboard definition is all about.

MS

P.S. Oh, and the Latin alphabet needs to be renamed by law into ASCII
International Reference Variant (IRV) alphabet.