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

The day Return became Enter (2023)

aresluna.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 179 posts

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#111

Post by j4_james »

i_am_proteus wrote: post #85
jama211 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if I should make a joke menubar program where every time you make a newline while typing it sounds a slide-ding noise! I might do that…

The "ding" is a bell that is mechanically activated when the carriage gets close to the end of the writeable area (in many typewriters, this is a moveable stop to account for variable paper width). So when one types, the bell alerts the typist to the need to return the carriage; typically you get quite a few characters after the bell, either to finish your word, or hyphenate. Which makes it ding-slide rather than sli…

This was also an option on many "Glass TTY" terminals - it was called the margin bell - and even some modern terminal emulators still have that option. The exact semantics vary, but it's usually triggered when entering content around 8 characters from the right margin.

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#112

Post by mathiaspoint »

Borg3 wrote: post #91
rswail wrote: post #49

It's a damn shame that the control characters for "Field Separator" (FS ASCII 28 decimal) and "Record Separator" (RS ASCII 30 decimal) weren't used instead of TAB and CR/LF. Then the whole CRLF vs CR vs LF for line endings in files would have been totally avoided, with CR returning the print-head/cursor to the left-most position (right-most on R-L languages) and LF literally moving the print-head/cursor down. The dri…

But we do NOT need to setup CRLF translation at all? Who in his sane mind uses CRLF even under windows? All my source codes are in UNIX format (aka LF only) and I use it consistent under Windows, Cygwin and UNIX.. Why make your life harder?

The language runtime will insert/remove CR for you if you open the file in text mode on Windows. You'd be surprised how much stuff cygwin itself actually does for you. If your code isn't too Linux specific try building it under mingw instead and you can see what's actually going on.

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#113

Post by LgWoodenBadger »

opan wrote: post #76
weinzierl wrote: post #55

We had distinct keys for Enter and Return for the longest time. An ISO standard keyboard has Return in the main block and Enter in the numpad. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enter_key#/media/File%3AEnte...

Enter and Numpad Enter are still distinct in QMK, and possibly some video game keybinds (just as numrow and numpad numbers can be recognized separately). Comparable to the left/right versions of ctrl, alt, super, and shift, I suppose. Fuctionally equivalent usually but can be differentiated, like a hypervisor using right alt to unfocus input. I wonder if the labels on your linked keyboard really mean much. It could b…

Back in the last century, Mathematica was like this as well. On Macs, "return" wouldn't run the command you entered, you had to hit "enter" from the numpad. Shift-return may have worked as well, but it's been so long I couldn't say for sure.

Edited: Mixed up Matlab and Mathematica

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#114

Post by kps »

bregma wrote: post #89
rswail wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carriage return moved the paper (on typewriters before the IBM Ball) and moved the print head (the "ball" on an IBM typewriter, or the actual print head on TTYs and DECWriter equivalents) back to column 0. Line Feed moved the paper up one line, Form Feed moved the paper up by a "form length" or, in the case of chain printers, to the particular position on the chain that was synchronized with the perforations on the p…

> Carriage return moved the paper (on typewriters before the IBM Ball) and moved the print head (the "ball" on an IBM typewriter, or the actual print head on TTYs and DECWriter equivalents) back to column 0. Carriage return always returned the carriage to the far right. Neither the print ball (if there was one), the printwheel, nor the typebars moved. Linefeed rotated the platen. It's true the carriage return lever o…

> Neither the print ball (if there was one), the printwheel, nor the typebars moved.

Certainly the head moved on most if not all ball/cylinder/wheel devices. Look at the Selectrics, Teletype 33, the Diablo/Xerox/Qume terminals, as common examples.

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#115

Post by kps »

Findecanor wrote: post #99

> And the IBM PC – and later Microsoft Windows – went with Enter. (Actually, they first chose the ↵ arrow. I'd claim that the article draws its own wrong conclusions. The key was not renamed . On the IBM PC, the key got overloaded with two functions. The IBM PC keyboard was preceded by larger keyboards with the same mechanism, style and font for use with IBM's terminals. Those had two separate keys for ↵ and Enter. T…

Speaking of overloading and Tab, piling on the ‘next field’ function is an endless source of pain.

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#116

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

lloydatkinson wrote: post #74

TIL that Shift Lock used to exist. What a shame it doesn’t anymore.

Given that you've got Caps Lock, what would be the use for Shift Lock?

I can't imagine any mainstream use where you'd want to enter a long sequence of symbols (!@#$% etc) needing Shift, other than letters.

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#117

Post by aleph_minus_one »

Borg3 wrote: post #91
rswail wrote: post #49

It's a damn shame that the control characters for "Field Separator" (FS ASCII 28 decimal) and "Record Separator" (RS ASCII 30 decimal) weren't used instead of TAB and CR/LF. Then the whole CRLF vs CR vs LF for line endings in files would have been totally avoided, with CR returning the print-head/cursor to the left-most position (right-most on R-L languages) and LF literally moving the print-head/cursor down. The dri…

But we do NOT need to setup CRLF translation at all? Who in his sane mind uses CRLF even under windows? All my source codes are in UNIX format (aka LF only) and I use it consistent under Windows, Cygwin and UNIX.. Why make your life harder?

> Who in his sane mind uses CRLF even under windows? All my source codes are in UNIX format (aka LF only) and I use it consistent under Windows, Cygwin and UNIX.. Why make your life harder?

Why would you use LF if the focus of the application that you develop is Windows? You make the life harder for these users. :-)

Seriously: your argument typically comes from developers who consider GNU/Linux as a first-class citizen as a development or deployment platform, and Windows only as a second-class citizen (assuming that a Windows port actually exists).

I can accept an argument like "I, as a developer, don't care about Windows and its users, so all my source code is in UNIX format." This is a conscious, though quite political decision.

But an argument like "not using LF makes lifes harder" without a relativization on which premises this claim is build (such as "GNU/Linux and macOS users are much more important for as, and if there exist any users or developers who use Windows, we consider them to be undesired, because they make everybody's lifes harder") is intellectual ignorance.

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#118

Post by OhMeadhbh »

I was a backer of the "Shift Happens" kickstarter and can confirm it has given me hours of enjoyment thinking about the way humans interact with their creations. This article is just a small fraction of the weirdness you find in keyboards over time. And I wonder if there's enough interest and content for narratives focused on joysticks or mice/trackballs/trackpads/nubs or game controllers or ...

I was a little surprised the Space Cadet keyboard didn't come up, but I guess this is an article about the return/enter key and not various modifier keys.

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#119

Post by dfox »

kps wrote: post #115
Findecanor wrote: post #99

> And the IBM PC – and later Microsoft Windows – went with Enter. (Actually, they first chose the ↵ arrow. I'd claim that the article draws its own wrong conclusions. The key was not renamed . On the IBM PC, the key got overloaded with two functions. The IBM PC keyboard was preceded by larger keyboards with the same mechanism, style and font for use with IBM's terminals. Those had two separate keys for ↵ and Enter. T…

Speaking of overloading and Tab, piling on the ‘next field’ function is an endless source of pain.

That is not an overloading, that is just preserving the behavior of Tab on IBM terminals.

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#120

Post by Sharlin »

kps wrote: post #115
Findecanor wrote: post #99

> And the IBM PC – and later Microsoft Windows – went with Enter. (Actually, they first chose the ↵ arrow. I'd claim that the article draws its own wrong conclusions. The key was not renamed . On the IBM PC, the key got overloaded with two functions. The IBM PC keyboard was preceded by larger keyboards with the same mechanism, style and font for use with IBM's terminals. Those had two separate keys for ↵ and Enter. T…

Speaking of overloading and Tab, piling on the ‘next field’ function is an endless source of pain.

"Next field" is sort of what tabulation means. Moving to the next column of a tabular form.
Post reply on HN