Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields

devblogs.microsoft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 250 posts

Re: IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields

#101

Post by tracker1 »

Joker_vD wrote: post #82
tracker1 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shift+Enter will usually enter a newline in a message without triggering send... At least that's the convention used most of the time. No guarantees on specific applications, just my own experience with this.

Some applications annoyingly use the opposite convention: Shift+Enter is what commits the entered text, while plain Enter inserts a newline.

Yeah, it's not always consistent... hell, google voice's sms in the web app will take shift+enter but fail and just submit half the time anyway.

Re: IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields

#105

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #55
ChuckMcM wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked at IBM, I would guess that using the tab key in this way was part of a patent they were pursuing and Microsoft's use would show this to be 'obvious' and thus not patentable. But that is just a guess. In the 80's IBM had a whole class of high level technical people called "Systems Engineers" whose entire job description was to opine on the merits of any given system. Not write systems, not debug them, an…

> I would guess that using the tab key in this way was part of a patent they were pursuing and Microsoft's use would show this to be 'obvious' and thus not patentable. Something that's bothered me about user-facing patents: Let's assume that the idea of using a keyboard key to move between input fields in a software form is not obvious, and in fact is a brilliant stroke of genius the likes of which the world is not l…

> move between input fields in a software form

IBMs earliest block mode terminals with field entry, including the 3270, predate the microprocessor. They were fully implemented with fixed hardware control.

Re: IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields

#106

Post by mrandish »

logickkk1 wrote: post #69
ch_123 wrote: post #13

I find this story odd because IBM was consistent with their keyboard nomenclature across multiple products, and the 3270 series mainframe terminals used the Tab key, located in the same place where you would find a tab key on a modern keyboard, to move the cursor to the next field. 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 f…

Funnily enough, IBM had already published this. CUA explicitly says tab and backtab move between fields. so they spent seven layers of management escalating against their own standard: https://archive.org/details/ibmsj2703E/page/n13/mode/2up

Not being familiar with the term CUA, I looked it up and TIL something (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access). Since the doc you linked is dated 1988 and CUA was a brand new thing circa OS/2 (at least in traditional IBM timescales), the apparent inconsistency might be down to the massive scale of IBM in those days and organizational propagation delay.

Another factor could be still-reverberating echoes of the likely political battles around something as broad and far-reaching as CUA. I can only imagine the quiet boardroom battles won and lost fighting over CUA between different factions across all of IBM's kingdoms, divisions and principalities.

Re: IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields

#107

Post by ch_123 »

dylan604 wrote: post #97
Animats wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a real IBM 3270 keyboard.[1] Note the "Next field" key on the left, and the matching "Previous field" key on the right. The IBM 3270 was a device for filling up forms. The mainframe sent the terminal a form with blanks, and the terminal let the user fill in the blanks. The terminal hardware prevented the user from overwriting the static parts of the form, and could apply some other form constraints, such as nu…

It looks really strange to have 3 keys right next to each other all pointed in the same direction. As another head scratcher, what is the shift-1 symbol? The exclamation point appears to be the shift next to one of the 3 left arrow keys, but I'm also unfamiliar with the regular unshifted key. Anyone familiar with these?

It's the | symbol.

On later generations of IBM terminal keyboard, you'll see | on the shift-1 position, and a separate key with the broken-bar (¦) symbol. For example, on this keyboard, the broken bar is below the backspace key along with the \ character. https://sharktastica.co.uk/image?id=qhTU8QvD

The reason for the two different types of bar/pipe characters, and why the original IBM PC keyboards only had the broken bar on the keyboard, involves a particularly arcane footnote of history relating to supporting the PL/I language on ASCII terminals: https://www.os2museum.com/wp/a-wunderbar-story/

Re: IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields

#108

Post by somat »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #55
ChuckMcM wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked at IBM, I would guess that using the tab key in this way was part of a patent they were pursuing and Microsoft's use would show this to be 'obvious' and thus not patentable. But that is just a guess. In the 80's IBM had a whole class of high level technical people called "Systems Engineers" whose entire job description was to opine on the merits of any given system. Not write systems, not debug them, an…

> I would guess that using the tab key in this way was part of a patent they were pursuing and Microsoft's use would show this to be 'obvious' and thus not patentable. Something that's bothered me about user-facing patents: Let's assume that the idea of using a keyboard key to move between input fields in a software form is not obvious, and in fact is a brilliant stroke of genius the likes of which the world is not l…

Err... wasn't your post a perfect example of why patents exist?

The concept probably has a real name, I call it first mover disadvantage. It is much easier to copy a mechanism than to invent it. So why even try? Every thing you have to spend real effort to invent is trivially copied the instant you try to sell it. And them copying it don't have to bear the nearly the R&D expenses you did. so it is trivial for them to sell this mechanism for less meaning you don't even get a fair slice of the pie.

So to try and limit this imbalance we invent a legal fiction, ownership, not of a physical thing, but the way it works. Not forever, but for 20 years you get ownership over those works.

Patents do have their problems, But I think the core idea is sound, create a registry of mechinisms, use this to provide economic protection to the inventor.

Re: IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields

#109

Post by andrewf »

rbanffy wrote: post #92
ChuckMcM wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked at IBM, I would guess that using the tab key in this way was part of a patent they were pursuing and Microsoft's use would show this to be 'obvious' and thus not patentable. But that is just a guess. In the 80's IBM had a whole class of high level technical people called "Systems Engineers" whose entire job description was to opine on the merits of any given system. Not write systems, not debug them, an…

> I would guess that using the tab key in this way was part of a patent they were pursuing and Microsoft's use would show this to be 'obvious' and thus not patentable. IBM insisting it not to be tab wouldn’t make sense. Microsoft was working for them and the programs should adhere to the CUA (Common User Access) standard.

OS/2 1.0 and the first edition of the CUA were both released in December 1987 according to Wikipedia; Raymond's story isn't dated but could've happened before this. (If I had to make a wild guess, I could imagine this request was a side effect of some internal IBM battle about what the CUA should dictate).

Re: IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields

#110

Post by OhMeadhbh »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #66
OhMeadhbh wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also the fact that no one seems to have tab stops set the same way.

That's a feature, not a bug.

You want source code indentation to be random on different machines? I guess. That would make me crazy.
Post reply on HN