Re: Keyboard questions

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   I am writing the SDL3 backend and trying a different type of
   keyboard mapping. A few questions:

   - Why usim has both knight and cadet implementations ? For
   completeness or something that can be done with knight cannot be
   done with cadet ?

Before my time I suppose -- The Lisp machine supports both, I think
when Brad Parker (who is really the "archidzieło" of this all) he had
a very old System trem (System 46).  And that might have only done
Knight.  So when that got implemented, Knight keyboard ... BV
implemented the "new keyboard" protocol (Cadet).

Flushing Knight is entierly possible.

   On cadet keyboard:

   - What is the purpose of Mode lock and Alt lock buttons ? They are
     toggle keys like caps lock I assume ?

Toggle, yes.  But unassigned, and don't do anything AFAIK.

   - Why is the mode lock button text white whereas caps lock and alt
     lock is black ?

On the physical keyboard? The black keys "shift" whatever you press,
including the buckies (control, meta, hyper).  Caps Lock becomes upper
case so shifts what you press.

Alt mode (I guess is what you meant?) and Mode Lock where not
assigned, and they did not switch your "letters".  Rather they had
some other intended purpose.

This is all intelligent speculation ... BV might know better, we could
ask Knulp who made the Cadet.

   - Why do some keys have multiple locations ? Like colon, greater
     and less than, parentheses

Easier to type.  In Lisp : and () and <> are very common, having them
unshifted is _super_ useful.