The day Return became Enter (2023)
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The day Return became Enter (2023)
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Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)
#2FTA: Apple also added Enter to the numeric keypad, although an Enter that almost exclusively did the same thing as Return.
If applications followed the UI guidelines, Enter behaved like Return if enter didn’t make sense in the context and vice versa. Yes, that was mostly (when do you have UI to enter a multi-line text to be processed as a separate unit?) but when it mattered, return started a new line, and enter sent entered text to be processed by the application.
MPW shell was a (?the?) prime example. In its editor, Return started a new line, Enter executed the current selection or, if there was none, line.
Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)
#3FTA: Apple also added Enter to the numeric keypad, although an Enter that almost exclusively did the same thing as Return. If applications followed the UI guidelines, Enter behaved like Return if enter didn’t make sense in the context and vice versa. Yes, that was mostly (when do you have UI to enter a multi-line text to be processed as a separate unit?) but when it mattered, return started a new line, and enter sent…
I have a faint memory of Enter creating a page break rather than a newline on a school Mac when I was a kid. Maybe that was in AppleWorks?
Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)
#4Technically the difference is clear. Return is for character based protocols, teletypes, ttys, VT100, ssh and the like.
Enter is for IBM 3278 style where a "screenful" or form of inputs is buffered by the terminal and sent as a whole when the user presses enter or send. Fewer interrupts and context switches at the mainframe. Required even its own ssh client. Return key exists, too, and can be part of the buffered data record.
In practice the enter term leaked into the character-based world.
Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)
#5I remember being mildly intrigued as a kid when I started seeing PCs with the Enter key where my C64 had Return.
It's ironic that, though we haven't seen a Return key for a long time, the down-left arrow symbol still used on many keyboards represents the motion of a carriage return. I guess there's no other symbol that would convey the meaning of Enter as well.
Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)
#6The first programmable device I owned was an HP scientific calculator, which had a big Enter key, the only key spanning the space of two regular keys on the device. A friend opined that you could tell that it was a real computer and not just a calculator by the presence of that key. It wasn’t true though, the Enter key was there for the HP’s RPN operation and wasn’t otherwise relevant to its programmability.
Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)
#7Technically the difference is clear. Return is for character based protocols, teletypes, ttys, VT100, ssh and the like. Enter is for IBM 3278 style where a "screenful" or form of inputs is buffered by the terminal and sent as a whole when the user presses enter or send. Fewer interrupts and context switches at the mainframe. Required even its own ssh client. Return key exists, too, and can be part of the buffered dat…
And of course ASCII separates them, with LF (linefeed, sometimes called newline) and CR (carriage return, or just return) being two separate characters. Windows (and probably some other) text file conventions used CR+LF to end a line, while unix conventions used just LF (hence the alternate name of "newline").
Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)
#8Technically the difference is clear. Return is for character based protocols, teletypes, ttys, VT100, ssh and the like. Enter is for IBM 3278 style where a "screenful" or form of inputs is buffered by the terminal and sent as a whole when the user presses enter or send. Fewer interrupts and context switches at the mainframe. Required even its own ssh client. Return key exists, too, and can be part of the buffered dat…
And of course ASCII separates them, with LF (linefeed, sometimes called newline) and CR (carriage return, or just return) being two separate characters. Windows (and probably some other) text file conventions used CR+LF to end a line, while unix conventions used just LF (hence the alternate name of "newline").
In line printers, a line feed moves the paper forward one line. A carriage return moves the print head back to the start of a line. You can do interesting things by making them separate commands, like bold text (overstrike) or underlining, so they were independent commands for talking to a line printer.
ASCII standardized on a character set containing control codes for line printers, so it included CR and LF separately. It's a bit weird that some terminals changed the semantics of those control codes, but I guess things never stay static in time.
Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)
#9On my phone with 100% text size, I got a hyphen as follows:
“Manual hyphenation was not ad-
vised, either”
It is a very common older model iPhone, so I wonder if they lined that up on purpose. Brilliant, if so. It isn’t a manual hyphen, it just so happens to hit there.
Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)
#10FTA: Apple also added Enter to the numeric keypad, although an Enter that almost exclusively did the same thing as Return. If applications followed the UI guidelines, Enter behaved like Return if enter didn’t make sense in the context and vice versa. Yes, that was mostly (when do you have UI to enter a multi-line text to be processed as a separate unit?) but when it mattered, return started a new line, and enter sent…
I have a faint memory of Enter creating a page break rather than a newline on a school Mac when I was a kid. Maybe that was in AppleWorks?
I wouldn’t doubt it, the way some Mac keys are completely unintuitive.