LK201 keyboard variation question???

I have a DEC LK201 keyboard. Model LK201, PN 70-23983-EC, D01
All the main keys have an additional character imprinted on the front
of the key. For instance the 'Q' key has a '?' on the front, the '5'
has a '=', the P has a '*'. There are also some graphics and what look
like mathematical notation characters on some keys, like 'R' has what
looks like a lower case 'p' with a little tail, 'J' has a degree
symbol, 'L' has a rectangle.

Anyone have any idea what these characters are for, and what
application they would be associated with? Thanks.

On Fri, 11 Jun 2004 10:35:16 -0700, dcsi wrote:

> I have a DEC LK201 keyboard. Model LK201, PN 70-23983-EC, D01
> All the main keys have an additional character imprinted on the front
> of the key.

Those are the characters required for programming in APL.

(dcsi) writes:

> I have a DEC LK201 keyboard. Model LK201, PN 70-23983-EC, D01 All
> the main keys have an additional character imprinted on the front of
> the key. For instance the 'Q' key has a '?' on the front, the '5'
> has a '=', the P has a '*'. There are also some graphics and what
> look like mathematical notation characters on some keys, like 'R'
> has what looks like a lower case 'p' with a little tail, 'J' has a
> degree symbol, 'L' has a rectangle.

APL char set?

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(dcsi) wrote in message news:<. com>...
> I have a DEC LK201 keyboard. Model LK201, PN 70-23983-EC, D01
> All the main keys have an additional character imprinted on the front
> of the key. For instance the 'Q' key has a '?' on the front, the '5'
> has a '=', the P has a '*'. There are also some graphics and what look
> like mathematical notation characters on some keys, like 'R' has what
> looks like a lower case 'p' with a little tail, 'J' has a degree
> symbol, 'L' has a rectangle.
>
> Anyone have any idea what these characters are for, and what
> application they would be associated with? Thanks.

APL -- "A Programming Language" (yes, really).

A "mathematician's delight" language with lots of powerful operators
which gained some cultish popularity in the late 1970s/80s,
particularly when "Byte" magazine made it its language of the year.
But it was pretty unintelligible to most people and never caught on.
DEC provided an interpreter and keyboard to match. The interpreter
(for RSX/RT IIRC) should be around on some DECUS tapes somewhere; I
may even have a copy.

<nostalgia>"Byte" did a competition to write an interpreter for a
microprocessor, providing a full set of flowcharts. I burned much
midnight oil trying to do it in assembler for the then new LSI-11. But
within a week of the closing date I found a major bug in one of their
flowcharts which couldn't be fixed in time. In the event, they only
got two entries, one in Pascal. But I did become the bee's knees at
MACRO programming in the process.</nostalgia>

Chris