Greatest Software Ever Written 4236

Arrow keys? Hmph. What's wrong with hjkl?

I tend to get a lot of off-by-one errors when I use the number row for numbers. Less so when I use it for symbols, for some reason.

Most days, I don't enter a lot of numbers, however. But last night I entered a bunch of stuff into a spreadsheet, and I found I was entering dates -- digit slash digit slash digit digit, mostly -- using the numeric row, and entering amounts using the keypad. It seemed to be that entering more than two digits using the top row introduced a lot of errors, and entering just one or two digits using the keypad seemed a waste of movement.

So why don't they put the numeric portion on the left?

It would (a) let the right-handed mouse-user enter data *and* mouse around at the same time and (b) provide some balance to the keyboard so it would fit more comfortably on my lap.

(Yes, I know that a keyboard without all those extra keys would be more centered -- but I have two Happy Hacking II keyboards, and they're not quite wide enough to balance comfortably when my feet on are on the desk; the wider keyboard is more stable, except when I try to center the letter keys.)

-- Ah! But does a half-dead cat have Buddha Nature? --Justin Chandler Sort of. --Nathan Wagner (April 2000)