Re: Computer documentation for the left-handed? (long)

[Gwen Barnes <gwen -dot- barnes -at- MUSTANG -dot- COM>]

-> I can remember when a mainframe programming team I worked on
-> got their first PCs. It wasn't all that long ago, about 1988. A
-> right-handed coworker, who had no prior experience with a mouse,
-> used it backwards with the cord end facing toward her instead
-> of away from her. By the time I noticed her doing this, she had
-> been using it that way for several months and was quite used to
-> it.

Way back in the 70s when I was a typesetter, it was hard to escape
noticing that all the typesetting machines made by CompuGraphic (now
absorbed by Agfa) were designed by a left-handed engineer. All the parts
that required mechanical manipulation were on the left side of the
machine, and all the little squeezy things and twisty things for
changing fonts were designed to be operated from the left rather than
from the right. The power switch was on the left. All the editing keys
were on a keypad to the left of the main keyboard. The only thing that
went on the right side were things that would get in the wy of
left-handers, such as floppy disk drives.

One also could not escape noticing that the designers had a thing for
the color International Klein Blue. EVERYTHING was painted blue.

When they went to 80x86-based systems in the early 1980s, everything
swapped back over to the right and was painted a quiet beigy-grey.

Cheers,                                                 @DISCLAIMER@
Gwen                                         gwen -dot- barnes -at- mustang -dot- com
http://www.mustang.com                         ftp://ftp.mustang.com
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