I'm in love

[johnb]

(02-02-2024 11:17 PM)agarza Wrote:  

(01-31-2024 09:01 PM)John Garza (3665) Wrote:  It still had mechanical keys for tactile feedback, but the keyboard faceplate [emphasis mine, jtb] was a display with holes in it for the keys, and could show different labeling for functions/programs the user wanted. Press a shift key and they all changed.
Sort of the ultimate overlay system.

Something like the stream deck from elgato?

Actually, from his description, sort of the opposite. I think he's saying instead of the keys changing, it would be the bezel behind it changing.

I would buy one of those in a heartbeat.

If it were a kit, it would be incentive enough for me to drag out my soldering station and decades old test equipment and set up a bench in my home office. [Uh oh, this is a really bad idea that will get me in trouble with my wife: if I could even find the o'scope, it's analog 1960's vintage, and everything else except the soldering iron is from the 70's, which will send me on a flurry of auction purchases to update things!]

In the distant future I can imagine flatscreen displays that don't stay flat: as you change the configuration of your app or whatever, not only does the display change, but the 3d topology of the display also changes to produce what effectively are real buttons and sliders that have different textures, for seriously good tactile and haptic feedback.

And in that day, some retro geek will reverse engineer himself a device that produces a reproduction of several different HP calculators of similar form factor, changeable by a voice command or a touch of a key. His fellow crewmembers aboard his starship will roll their eyes at this. [:smirk:]