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Weird because on the mainframe 3270 the tab key was used to move between fields, at least that is my recollection.
Weird because on the mainframe 3270 the tab key was used to move between fields, at least that is my recollection.
https://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/3278/GA27-2890-4_3278_Disp... (Page 73 of the PDF)
As an aside, it's worth noting that moving between fields was important enough on IBM terminals that they had a dedicated "back tab" key located on the opposite end of the keyboard to the tab key. On the original IBM PC, they decided to combine both functions into a single key. As a result, the tab key on the classic PC keyboard features the symbols for both forwards tab and back tab on the same key, the back tab symbol being on top to indicate that you need to hold down shift to use that function.
EDIT: The 5250 series terminals used the terms "Field Advance" and "Field Backspace" instead of Tab and Back Tab, but otherwise they used the same symbol on the keys, and the keys were located in roughly the same position as the 3270 series. Reference: https://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/5291/GA21-9409-0_5291_Disp...
The tab key itself is hijacked by modern OS/UI behavior. It makes it complicated to actually type literal tab characters in certain contexts, particularly in the browser.
I still prefer tabs (and I'm a Go developer), but he is absolutely correct about that being a pain in the butt. For instance, try getting a tab character into the text area on Hacker News
What did IBM want? Arrow keys?
Enter/return commonly used elsewhere.
A great read, although I'd still like to know what IBM's reasoning for opposing this use of the Tab key was. Is it because they didn't want Tab to be both an input and a control character? I.e. there are some cases where you can type a Tab into an input field, and there are other cases where you can't, and it's not immediately obvious which ones are which? All the way in 2026, I would still be sympathetic to this vie…
A great read, although I'd still like to know what IBM's reasoning for opposing this use of the Tab key was. Is it because they didn't want Tab to be both an input and a control character? I.e. there are some cases where you can type a Tab into an input field, and there are other cases where you can't, and it's not immediately obvious which ones are which? All the way in 2026, I would still be sympathetic to this vie…
As someone who prefers tabs (I'm not looking to argue), I once asked Brendan Eich on Twitter why he prefers spaces. His answer was more thoughtful than I'd expected. The tab key itself is hijacked by modern OS/UI behavior. It makes it complicated to actually type literal tab characters in certain contexts, particularly in the browser. I still prefer tabs (and I'm a Go developer), but he is absolutely correct about th…
I was once told that the tab key can be represented in different ways on different systems, and that's why spaces are safer because they're always represented the same.
Is that what Brendan was trying to say?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Enter/return commonly used elsewhere.
What would be 'submit' then?