[Info-vax] In praise of DEC's keypad power

[Slo]

I'm surprised that in recent EDT discussions no one here 
mentioned K52/KED, the editors I remember using on RSX-11, 
around 1980. EDT and the rest must have evolved
from them - the mapping and functions are 100% identical.

https://avitech.com.au/?page_id=959

I remember clearly when a colleague showed it to me, and
I shrugged it away. After all, I felt productive with
EDI. Where are the line numbers in KED? How do you
know where you are and how do you jump to line 55?
Moving around the screen just felt so inferior, almost a toy,
I was totally confused. Screen editing???

This is a lesson learned on how we reject things we do
not know, and can't appreciate until we force ourselves
to try them. To this day, I suffer from this... Yes,
forcing is the word. Laziness and habits rule...

Ignoring the functionality of various editors, I think
turning the keypad section of DEC's keyboards into the
control center of many apps is a work of genius. It's
been used in Mail, NOTES, WPS+, etc., more or less
consistently, and it was easy to switch and learn
new mappings. Why? Because PF2 in all apps would show
you what the keys do!

I've used DEFINE KEY on the keypad (and the F keys) extensively 
in DCL, and this is still how I navigate and issue MOUNTs, 
SHOWs, SETs, DIRs, SEARCH, the incredibly boring SET DEFAULTs, etc.
Many of my keys execute DCL commands, others are elaborate .COM files.
I try to replicate this on other platforms; on Windows, AutoHotkey makes
life easy for me.