In article a97kf.62950$qw.9566@fed1read07, wrote:

Roy Smith wrote:



I agree -- the biggest problem with today's crop of GPS is that the UIs all
stink. Having a full keyboard would help a lot (not full in the sense of a
normal PC keyboard, but all the digits and letters). The problem is,
there's no place to put such a thing in a typical GA cockpit. They are
starting to appear, however, in conjunction with cockpits designed from the
ground up to use modern systems (http://www.lancairusa.com/20051103.html,
for example).

The avionics engineers call it panel "real estate."

It's a common term. I do software development for a living. We talk about
"screen real estate", as in, "I'd really love to make that text field
bigger, but I don't think we can afford the real estate".