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Wow! I remember fondly my C64 and it's special "front" graphic characters. While the space-cadet is certainly over-the-top I think we could still use some of it's influence again. I am very dissapointed that the Alt key, for instance, has been co-opted for more "control" functions, while the function keys have faded in use.
Some dates would be educational. -- Beland 03:02, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
There are a lot of extra keys that aren't mentioned in this article:
There's a few more that could be expanded upon. — Scott5114 ↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 05:27, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
(Parenthetical explanations revised by Devon Sean McCULLOUGH 2015 August 26 Wednesday, sorry I don't know the talk page guidelines but this info is verifiable in the "ChineUal" Lisp Machine Manuals & source code published by MIT)
Devon Sean McCULLOUGH ( talk) 15:08, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
The Jargon File reference link does not work and the given ISBN does not appear in any registry I tried. I would update it but the only Jargon File I ever use is the online one maintained by ESR. Zlynx ( talk) 20:12, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
Although it is commonly known, that Knight Keyboard influenced keystroke-oriented design of EMACS, the impact on early home computing industry shall also be mentioned: spoken above "front" characters of c-64, and most notably, the multi-mode 5-command keys of original Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Worth noticing: Knight Keyboard is "EMACS-Keyboard" and ZX-Spectrum one is "VI-Keyboard' (it uses modes instead of bucky bits) I lack proper knowledge to edit the article, but there maybe is someone willing to do that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.212.82.66 ( talk) 07:56, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
See this picture: http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/its-cover.png
The source is the cover of the manual for the first ITS Emacs, and, at least to me, is clearly parodying Emacs' modifiers and space-cadet style keyboards. Worth including? -- Gwern (contribs) 05:04 31 July 2009 (GMT)
Why do super key and meta key have their own article but not hyper key? - NeF ( talk) 16:44, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
I recently (today) uploaded a SVG of the Space Cadet Keyboard's layout to wikicommons ( https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/wiki/File:Spacecadetkeyboard.svg). My intention it to turn it into a imagemap so readers of this article could click on it to go to each key's specific page—similar to many keyboard related articles having this ( https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Template:Keyboard) template. I would appreciate help in cleaning up the image, it isn't very legible scaled down to a reasonable size. The Sanest Mad Hatter ( talk) 23:57, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
I've been looking through several documents regarding early Symbolics Lisp and information that corresponds to the "space-cadet" keyboard. The Jargon File seems to imply that by using combinations of Ctrl, Meta, Super and Hyper, thousands of characters were possible (and perhaps even actually mapped) using this keyboard. However, from what I've read, the bucky bit modifier keys weren't for additional special characters but for specialized command use by Lisp itself or programs running in that environment (just as Ctrl and Alt are commonly used in different ways in a modern graphical user interface). Thus, the Symbolics space-cadet keyboard "only" had five shift levels (default, Shift, Greek [Front], Shift-Greek and Top). In fact, this is exactly what is shown in the table in the Description section of the article. This makes sense as (presumably) Lisp programmers would have been more interested in having a large number of modifiers for commands and programming functions rather than something like a prehistoric Unicode range (the Xerox Star rather than MIT-based Lisp machines was a pioneer in larger character sets/internationalization).
For the record, I just came across documentation of the Symbolics character set (w00t!). It has a total of 162 character encodings and 136 available but unused encodings (that are not "reserved" or "null character"). I'm not sure if this information should go in this article or one about Symbolics Lisp. Bumm13 ( talk) 21:32, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
I remember when this keyboard came out. It was called the Kulp keyboard, after John L. Kulp, one of the Symbolics founders (see User:Russell Noftsker), who I believe was the person who designed it. He ought to get credit in the article, but unfortunately I have no documentation to back up my claim so I won't edit it.
Someone asked about years. Symbolics was founded in 1980. This keyboard would have been produced soon thereafter - or possibly even before if Kulp had some made while he was still at the MIT Plasma Fusion Center. Don't know how you'd research this other than asking him. Jar354 ( talk) 22:38, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
Comlinks are controlled by commands beginning with the special character called "backnext". This character actually exists only on Knight TV keyboards, but it may be simulated by typing controlunderscore or MACRO.The BACKNEXT key is visible here: http://world.std.com/~jdostale/kbd/Knight.html No such key on the Space-cadet: /info/en/?search=Space-cadet_keyboard#/media/File:Space-cadet.jpg
Why is this being spelled as though Space-cadet were an adjective rather than part of a name? I realize these boards were never officially called this, but Space Cadet keyboard (no hyphen, both words capped) is how you'd expect it to be spelled. I see both spellings used around the Web. If it's a documented fact that whoever created the name didn't know better, I suppose history should win. (I'd also add the details to the topic, as the name's origin would be interesting even if eccentric spelling weren't involved.) Otherwise, suppose we fix it? – AndyFielding ( talk) 22:05, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
I searched online for any more information on this keyboard because I was interested in the origin of its name, but I haven't found any more information than is already included in the article.
There are two possibilities for the origin of this name: 1) official documentation for the original system referred to it by this name, which seems unlikely, or 2) someone referred to it at some point in time by this nickname. Every page I found calls it a Lisp machine keyboard, and every site then immediately jumps into a description of the many special keys and how they were historically used - there is no mention of why it goes by this name, who gave it this name, or when it got this name.
I think an encyclopedic article on this keyboard should include an etymology section that explains the origin of the name. If it was named this originally, that would be an interesting fact, but I could also see how maybe nobody actually knows why it's called the space cadet keyboard. It's also possible that many people know why it goes by this name but assume it's obvious and doesn't need to be explained - if so, allow me to point out that it's not obvious to everyone. In any case, it would be appropriate to include a section in the article with this information.
So, does anybody know anything more about the origin of its name? Bz8x8c ( talk) 18:32, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
Does this really need an article? Does anyone actually care about some obscure keyboard used by 20 people five decades ago? Nothing about this keyboard is noteworthy or important. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.207.57.166 ( talk) 20:21, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
The article says 50 x 5 * 2^4 (16) = 8000. My calculator says 4000. I don't have a clue what is right but just thought I'd mention it in case someone with more knowledge wanted to clarify things. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pedzsan ( talk • contribs) 16:44, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
The article states that EMACS uses the M- prefix for the Alt key. This is backwards. What is happening is that you have chosen (or at any rate, defaulted) to map Meta to your ⎇Alt key. Meta, not Alt, is the EMACS concept. The proof of this is that you can run EMACS on things other than PCs. I'm now using a MacBook, and I have Meta mapped to 🌐Fn (so I can keep ⌘Command and ⌥Option available for their native uses); there is no Alt key here at all. Yet still and always there is EMACS. 2600:1700:38D4:604F:446C:1542:EA79:FDE6 ( talk) 01:48, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Space-cadet keyboard article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
![]() | This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||
|
Wow! I remember fondly my C64 and it's special "front" graphic characters. While the space-cadet is certainly over-the-top I think we could still use some of it's influence again. I am very dissapointed that the Alt key, for instance, has been co-opted for more "control" functions, while the function keys have faded in use.
Some dates would be educational. -- Beland 03:02, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
There are a lot of extra keys that aren't mentioned in this article:
There's a few more that could be expanded upon. — Scott5114 ↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 05:27, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
(Parenthetical explanations revised by Devon Sean McCULLOUGH 2015 August 26 Wednesday, sorry I don't know the talk page guidelines but this info is verifiable in the "ChineUal" Lisp Machine Manuals & source code published by MIT)
Devon Sean McCULLOUGH ( talk) 15:08, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
The Jargon File reference link does not work and the given ISBN does not appear in any registry I tried. I would update it but the only Jargon File I ever use is the online one maintained by ESR. Zlynx ( talk) 20:12, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
Although it is commonly known, that Knight Keyboard influenced keystroke-oriented design of EMACS, the impact on early home computing industry shall also be mentioned: spoken above "front" characters of c-64, and most notably, the multi-mode 5-command keys of original Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Worth noticing: Knight Keyboard is "EMACS-Keyboard" and ZX-Spectrum one is "VI-Keyboard' (it uses modes instead of bucky bits) I lack proper knowledge to edit the article, but there maybe is someone willing to do that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.212.82.66 ( talk) 07:56, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
See this picture: http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/its-cover.png
The source is the cover of the manual for the first ITS Emacs, and, at least to me, is clearly parodying Emacs' modifiers and space-cadet style keyboards. Worth including? -- Gwern (contribs) 05:04 31 July 2009 (GMT)
Why do super key and meta key have their own article but not hyper key? - NeF ( talk) 16:44, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
I recently (today) uploaded a SVG of the Space Cadet Keyboard's layout to wikicommons ( https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/wiki/File:Spacecadetkeyboard.svg). My intention it to turn it into a imagemap so readers of this article could click on it to go to each key's specific page—similar to many keyboard related articles having this ( https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Template:Keyboard) template. I would appreciate help in cleaning up the image, it isn't very legible scaled down to a reasonable size. The Sanest Mad Hatter ( talk) 23:57, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
I've been looking through several documents regarding early Symbolics Lisp and information that corresponds to the "space-cadet" keyboard. The Jargon File seems to imply that by using combinations of Ctrl, Meta, Super and Hyper, thousands of characters were possible (and perhaps even actually mapped) using this keyboard. However, from what I've read, the bucky bit modifier keys weren't for additional special characters but for specialized command use by Lisp itself or programs running in that environment (just as Ctrl and Alt are commonly used in different ways in a modern graphical user interface). Thus, the Symbolics space-cadet keyboard "only" had five shift levels (default, Shift, Greek [Front], Shift-Greek and Top). In fact, this is exactly what is shown in the table in the Description section of the article. This makes sense as (presumably) Lisp programmers would have been more interested in having a large number of modifiers for commands and programming functions rather than something like a prehistoric Unicode range (the Xerox Star rather than MIT-based Lisp machines was a pioneer in larger character sets/internationalization).
For the record, I just came across documentation of the Symbolics character set (w00t!). It has a total of 162 character encodings and 136 available but unused encodings (that are not "reserved" or "null character"). I'm not sure if this information should go in this article or one about Symbolics Lisp. Bumm13 ( talk) 21:32, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
I remember when this keyboard came out. It was called the Kulp keyboard, after John L. Kulp, one of the Symbolics founders (see User:Russell Noftsker), who I believe was the person who designed it. He ought to get credit in the article, but unfortunately I have no documentation to back up my claim so I won't edit it.
Someone asked about years. Symbolics was founded in 1980. This keyboard would have been produced soon thereafter - or possibly even before if Kulp had some made while he was still at the MIT Plasma Fusion Center. Don't know how you'd research this other than asking him. Jar354 ( talk) 22:38, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
Comlinks are controlled by commands beginning with the special character called "backnext". This character actually exists only on Knight TV keyboards, but it may be simulated by typing controlunderscore or MACRO.The BACKNEXT key is visible here: http://world.std.com/~jdostale/kbd/Knight.html No such key on the Space-cadet: /info/en/?search=Space-cadet_keyboard#/media/File:Space-cadet.jpg
Why is this being spelled as though Space-cadet were an adjective rather than part of a name? I realize these boards were never officially called this, but Space Cadet keyboard (no hyphen, both words capped) is how you'd expect it to be spelled. I see both spellings used around the Web. If it's a documented fact that whoever created the name didn't know better, I suppose history should win. (I'd also add the details to the topic, as the name's origin would be interesting even if eccentric spelling weren't involved.) Otherwise, suppose we fix it? – AndyFielding ( talk) 22:05, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
I searched online for any more information on this keyboard because I was interested in the origin of its name, but I haven't found any more information than is already included in the article.
There are two possibilities for the origin of this name: 1) official documentation for the original system referred to it by this name, which seems unlikely, or 2) someone referred to it at some point in time by this nickname. Every page I found calls it a Lisp machine keyboard, and every site then immediately jumps into a description of the many special keys and how they were historically used - there is no mention of why it goes by this name, who gave it this name, or when it got this name.
I think an encyclopedic article on this keyboard should include an etymology section that explains the origin of the name. If it was named this originally, that would be an interesting fact, but I could also see how maybe nobody actually knows why it's called the space cadet keyboard. It's also possible that many people know why it goes by this name but assume it's obvious and doesn't need to be explained - if so, allow me to point out that it's not obvious to everyone. In any case, it would be appropriate to include a section in the article with this information.
So, does anybody know anything more about the origin of its name? Bz8x8c ( talk) 18:32, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
Does this really need an article? Does anyone actually care about some obscure keyboard used by 20 people five decades ago? Nothing about this keyboard is noteworthy or important. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.207.57.166 ( talk) 20:21, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
The article says 50 x 5 * 2^4 (16) = 8000. My calculator says 4000. I don't have a clue what is right but just thought I'd mention it in case someone with more knowledge wanted to clarify things. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pedzsan ( talk • contribs) 16:44, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
The article states that EMACS uses the M- prefix for the Alt key. This is backwards. What is happening is that you have chosen (or at any rate, defaulted) to map Meta to your ⎇Alt key. Meta, not Alt, is the EMACS concept. The proof of this is that you can run EMACS on things other than PCs. I'm now using a MacBook, and I have Meta mapped to 🌐Fn (so I can keep ⌘Command and ⌥Option available for their native uses); there is no Alt key here at all. Yet still and always there is EMACS. 2600:1700:38D4:604F:446C:1542:EA79:FDE6 ( talk) 01:48, 8 May 2023 (UTC)