Liverpool late 70s: offices tended to be divided into larger numbers of small rooms. Typing in some of them. Really loud phone conversations in others. Relative quiet in others. Electric typewriters quietened things a little.
It's just a keyboard. I thought he was going to do an entire typewriter-based user interface for VIM. The Culler-Fried system in the 1960s used an interface where you could turn the typewriter platen knob to a different line or between lines to type subscripts and superscripts. (Mice hadn't been invented yet.)
I restore old Teletype machines, as I've mentioned before.[1] Keyboard feel on these is interesting. When you press a key, it locks down, the keyboard driveshaft rotates once, and the key releases. Then you can press another key. Effective typing has to be done in rhythm at 5 chars/sec, like playing a piano. You can't press two keys at once; once a key is down, no other key will move.
Because this was annoying to fast typists in the models from 1912 to 1926, in 1930 Teletype put spring-loaded keytops on their keys, allowing about 1/8" of spring loaded travel before you blunted your fingers because the key lever would not move yet. You could then start to press a key before the keyboard unlocked.
The IBM Selectric had one-character type-ahead in an entirely mechanical machine. That was a very nice piece of mechanical engineering. There are Selectrics with electrical I/O, but they are quite rare.
You can also use an old usb keyboard controller board. Besides the hassle of point to point soldering all keys to the keyboard controller matrix (after mapping all combinations), you get a USB compliant device. Disclaimer : I have never used this technique for a whole keyboard but it worked pretty well to transform an old arcade controler to use mame or to midify an old organ bass pedal.
I wanted to go the other way--use a typewritter as a printer.(computer--to modified IBM electric typewriter). Some company manufactured a lid you put over the keys of an IBM typewritter. The lid/cover had little solenoids that push the keys. It looks like the product never took off?
I do like the look of typewritten papers. I remember my first dot matrix printer. I thought it looks like a typewritten paper, and the ribbons last forever. I went through college and changed it once? I liked printers up until they chipped the cartridges. I guess I don't value new technology when I have to pay more for it?
No and the author addresses this in the article saying he mapped 'jj' to Esc. The downside with this choice is he cannot move the cursor down multiple lines in normal mode.
One of the bonuses of this is that you can get a literal "paper trail" of your edit history, which is slightly different from a dumb terminal in that the "local echo" is always on. Not ideal for things like passwords though...
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Liverpool late 70s: offices tended to be divided into larger numbers of small rooms. Typing in some of them. Really loud phone conversations in others. Relative quiet in others. Electric typewriters quietened things a little.
Also, there's a guy who made a stupid bet regarding this: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/typewriter-odyssey#/story
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9180275
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3029144
I restore old Teletype machines, as I've mentioned before.[1] Keyboard feel on these is interesting. When you press a key, it locks down, the keyboard driveshaft rotates once, and the key releases. Then you can press another key. Effective typing has to be done in rhythm at 5 chars/sec, like playing a piano. You can't press two keys at once; once a key is down, no other key will move.
Because this was annoying to fast typists in the models from 1912 to 1926, in 1930 Teletype put spring-loaded keytops on their keys, allowing about 1/8" of spring loaded travel before you blunted your fingers because the key lever would not move yet. You could then start to press a key before the keyboard unlocked.
The IBM Selectric had one-character type-ahead in an entirely mechanical machine. That was a very nice piece of mechanical engineering. There are Selectrics with electrical I/O, but they are quite rare.
[1] https://vimeo.com/124065314
But as someone who has a model 12 and model 15, I know what you mean.
(for anyone who has not seen the movie:) http://writelephant.com/2015/06/26/typo/
¹http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/unix/upt/ch30_36.htm