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The day Return became Enter (2023)

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Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#151

Post by kps »

bregma wrote: post #145
kps wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I have never seen a Selectric in which the ball moved instead of the carriage. I can't imagine how complicated the mechanics would be for that and how often it would jam, break, or malfunction. Certainly not something a company such as IBM would make their reputation on. I used many Selectrics in my time.

You must be confusing these with something else. Every Selectric had a fixed carriage and moving head.

IBM Selectric: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNUEUth7qjc

IBM Wheelwriter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZabsF0aIE6k

NEC Spinwriter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCCB0AW9yT4

Diablo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5bodpSsFl8&t=342

Teletype Model 33: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N8gu5F894k

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#152

Post by Animats »

ahazred8ta wrote: post #135
Animats wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. No, it's not. That stuff is left over from 1940s-1950s schemes for polled multidrop teletype machines - multiple stations on one wire, taking turns. The idea was that you punched paper tapes locally and then put them into a reader. When it was…

Here's a pdf of a blank prop Western Union telegram form. Have you got others? https://www.hplhs.org/resources.php

I've used their fonts. Our telegram blanks were very similar, but custom.[1]

[1] https://aether.ltd

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#153

Post by qwertygnu »

Bjartr wrote: post #131

Subtle clickbait. Promising "the day return became enter" to entice. It can be narrowed down to a single day, or at least close enough to a single event that way can pick an effective day? Was it a single product release? A single software release? I'll read the article to find out. > There was no day, no single event when Return became Enter Oh, never mind then... Could've just titled it "The history of how Return b…

A lot of people talk like this too. I'm sure I'm a little too literal, but IMO most people are too clickbait-y.

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#154

Post by ogab »

I liked this article a lot because I’ve spent way too much time thinking about things like this, thanks to my mechanical keyboard and keycap hobby.

That said, it misses a key ancestor: the original Macintosh Keyboard (M0110). It had a Return key AND an Enter key in the bottom row, to the right of the spacebar and next to the Option key.

There was Command key on the left only, which seems to mark the evolution from the “Open Apple” and “Closed Apple” keys. If I recall correctly, Return was intended for typing, while Enter was used for GUI interaction, but I’m not entirely sure.

Even into the 2000s, laptops were still figuring things out. I had a 12-inch PowerBook G4 with two keys labeled “Enter”:

- One accessible via Fn + Return - One as its own key in the bottom row, next to the right Command key

This layout meant it only had one Option key. It also featured a lockable numpad layer, so having a standalone Enter key made less sense to me. Unless it was meant for spreadsheet number crunchers? Or there was still that typing/GUI distinction in Mac OS 9 somewhere?

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#155

Post by Animats »

rswail wrote: post #78
Animats wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. No, it's not. That stuff is left over from 1940s-1950s schemes for polled multidrop teletype machines - multiple stations on one wire, taking turns. The idea was that you punched paper tapes locally and then put them into a reader. When it was…

Why? The use of TTYs for computing interfaces is very different to using them as teletypes on comms links. I thought the control characters for that sort of use were the DC1-4 characters? RS-485 uses polling but my understanding is that the characters for polling usually involve like "FF" (hex) and some sort of device ID. I just read a TTY model 28 manual about the stunt box and I didn't see anything specific about F…

> I just read a TTY model 28 manual about the stunt box and I didn't see anything specific about FS/GS/RS there.

The Model 28 was a 5-bit Baudot (ITA2 code) machine with a stunt box. The Model 35, an ASCII machine, had a similar system, with different coding.[1] The term "Selective calling" replaced "stunt box".

ASCII-67 is modern ASCII, but there was previously ASCII-63.[2] That keyboard has special keys for selective calling. WRU, RU, EOT, EOA, TAPE, ~TAPE, etc. Codes didn't become standardized industry-wide until ASCII-67. Before that, there were lots of variations.

Here's a popular view of the process in the Baudot era.[3] That big switching center is essentially Sendmail built from of relays and paper tape equipment. It was called "Plan 55-A".[4]

[1] https://www.smecc.org/teleprinters/35selcall001.pdf

[2] https://lostbits.net/blog/the-teletype-model-35-character-se...

[3] https://youtu.be/PKJyGuhCQdQ?t=369

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_55-A

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#156

Post by bsimpson »

ogab wrote: post #154

I liked this article a lot because I’ve spent way too much time thinking about things like this, thanks to my mechanical keyboard and keycap hobby. That said, it misses a key ancestor: the original Macintosh Keyboard (M0110). It had a Return key AND an Enter key in the bottom row, to the right of the spacebar and next to the Option key. There was Command key on the left only, which seems to mark the evolution from th…

Here's a photo of that keyboard: https://www.instructables.com/Apple-M0110-Keyboard-Crossover...

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#157

Post by bsimpson »

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...

As a lifelong Mac user, that's my mental model of that key. It's still the layout Apple uses in the US:

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MXK83LL/A/magic-keyboard-...

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#158

Post by wpm »

iamflimflam1 wrote: post #71
unwind wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, throwback to running MacScheme (I think) on the university's Macs in a computer lab in the mid-90s. It interpreted main keyboard Return differently from numpad Enter, which to me (coming from the Amiga) was very confusing. If I recall correctly, only Return caused an evaluation attempt, while Enter merely added a line break for readability.

That would be incredibly handy for chat bots - the number of times I’ve accidentally hit return and then has to interrupt the bot so I can finish typing…

Or Slack. Shift-Return for a new line, except if you're in a code block!

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#159

Post by Tsiklon »

chuckadams wrote: post #132
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…

Apple keyboards don't use the ⇥ symbol anymore, it's just labeled "tab" now (and the labels are lowercase). At least on a US keyboard, possibly it's different for others. I still remember when the ⌘ key was "open apple".

It seems it’s only US English keyboards that apple print the name of the key on.

All ISO layouts plus a few of the other ANSI layouts (like Korean) make use of the symbols

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#160

Post by jama211 »

comex wrote: post #65
jama211 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, TIL. I do wonder though what programs are looking so specifically for the exact Enter code.

This post has a few examples: https://daringfireball.net/2020/07/return_and_enter

Good old daringfireball! Ah, of course it makes sense, things akin to the shift+enter for adding new lines in messages without executing them or vice versa. I should’ve known.
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