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While I do like simple markup, I think that all markup languages will become a lot better when text input hardware slightly evolves. We are so close to having
by makecheck 10y ago
While I do like simple markup, I think that all markup languages will become a lot better when text input hardware slightly evolves. We are so close to having this.
We have Unicode but most of its symbols are a pain to generate on conventional keyboards.
We have touch-screens but desktop computer keyboards don’t offer them and software on phones/pads still tries a bit too hard to emulate a conventional keyboard layout.
Imagine if all standard keyboards had touch displays on the side to quickly flip between tables of related symbols, optionally with some context-sensitive mode? Then, instead of having to use creative ASCII tricks to make it “simple” to describe what you want, you just do it through your input device.
Ultimately I think markup languages will have to distill their features down to a few structural elements, and rely on Unicode (and easier Unicode input methods) to handle what is currently being done with ASCII hacks.
- jessriedel 10y agoWould the Optimus Maximus keyboard work? https://www.google.com/search?q=Optimus+Maximus+keyboard&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=Optimus+Maximus+keyboard&tbm... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimus_Maximus_keyboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimus_Maximus_keyboard It exists but hasn't taken over the world. Apparently Apple's working an OLED display above their keyboard. http://9to5mac.com/2016/05/23/apple-prepping-thinner-macbook-pros-with-oled-screen-above-keyboard-touch-id-for-q4/ http://9to5mac.com/2016/05/23/apple-prepping-thinner-macbook...
- copperx 10y agoA keyboard with OLED keycaps that change depending on the context would be reason enough to get a new laptop altogether, even though I have a brand new one. As someone who context-switches from XCode to IntelliJ to Photoshop to Emacs, sometimes I confuse the shortcuts, and I don't learn more shortcuts because I'm afraid they will not carry over to other programs. Having discoverable shortcuts would be amazing.
- jessriedel 10y agoYea, it always surprised me that Apple hadn't fully copied this idea for Mac books. Maybe it needed to wait for OLEDs?