TRON Keyboard

TRON Keyboard History

The TRON keyboard is developed by Professor Ken Sakamura, in 1987, as part of the TRON Operating System project.

First production unit of the TRON keyboard is TRON TK1, made from year 1991 to 1996. Used with NEC PC-9800 series personal computers that were very popular in Japan until early 1990.

TRON Keyboard Input System

TRON keyboard comes with its own input method for Japanese. It is designed to input Japanese efficiently. 〔see Japanese Input Method〕

• The English letters printed in front of keys, is the Dvorak Keyboard Layout.
• Press the 英语 (on left thumb area) to go to English mode. When in English mode, pressing the keys inserts English alphabets.
• Press the 日本语 (on right thumb area) to go to Japanese (hiragana) mode. When in Japanese mode, pressing the keys inserts hiragana (Japanese phonetics). 〔see Unicode: Japanese Writing System の〕

Some interesting features:

• Special left thumb shift key (colored red ⇧ ) and right thumb shift key (colored blue ⇧ ). This triples a key's use. But, it also create the awkward hand strain when you need to press thumb and a key of the same hand.

• The number row contains curly quotes ‘ ’ “ ” , and Asian brackets 「 」 『 』 〈 〉. 〔see Unicode: Brackets, Quotes 「」【】《》〕

There is a gap between pinky column and little finger column. e.g. note the large gap between A and O. Same thing for the right hand on N and S. This seems strange.

Some references about the TRON keyboard design:

• 〔TRON Project 1987 Open-Architecture Computer Systems: Proceedings of the Third TRON Project Symposium, 1987 By Sadao Tachibana, Ken Sakamura. At Buy at amazon, An Implementation of the TRON Keyboard pp 139-150〕
• [Ken Sakamura, Method to Input Japanese Characters in BTRON Environment — Design of TRON Keyboard, Information Processing Society of Japan, Japanese Documentation Processing Study Group, 7 - 2 (1986)]
• [Masaru Nakaseko, Ergonomic Design of Keyboard, Human Engineering, Vol. 22, No. 2 (1986)]

Typing Demo

SkeleTron

• SkeleTron Keyboard

DIY Tron

• DIY Tron

The Legend of Koizumi

Mudazumo Naki Kaikaku (ムダヅモ無き改革 Reform with No Wasted Draws, also known in English by its initial subtitle The Legend of Koizumi) is a satirical mahjong manga by Hideki Ohwada.

It was initially irregularly serialized in the Kindai Mahjong Original manga magazine published by Takeshobo, then switched to bimonthly serialization on Takeshobo's other mahjong manga magazine Kindai Mahjong in April 2009.

The premise of the manga is that international diplomacy is settled on the mahjong table, with real-life politicians depicted as masters of mahjong.

The Japanese title is a parody of Junichiro Koizumi's slogan, “Reform with No Sanctuary” (聖域無き改革 Seiiki Naki Kaikaku).

《小泉麻將傳說》（日語：ムダヅモ無き改革，英语：The Legend of Koizumi，即小泉傳奇），是日本漫畫家大和田秀樹的麻將漫畫，從2006年起不定期連載於竹書房《近代麻雀original》上，在2009年4月起改至《近代麻雀》上連載。

[2018-02-18 Mudazumo Naki Kaikaku]