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

devblogs.microsoft.com

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

#191

Post by bel8 »

nomel wrote: post #188
CSSer wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, I'm confused. Was that supposed to be an insult?!

This is a very legitimate question: In the US, where is it not? Public buses aren't safe, clean, or timely. Where I am, it's 2.5 hours rather than a 26 minute commute by car. The only reason you ride one is usually if you are already in the proximity of your destination, especially if that destination is downtown. For all other cases, private or ride-share makes way more sense. We're talking buses here, not shuttles,…

London buses are a pleasure in contrast.

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

#192

Post by OhMeadhbh »

Silamoth wrote: post #125
OhMeadhbh wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It’s not “random”, it’s whatever you’ve configured it to on your machine. Your choice of (e.g.) 3 spaces per tab shouldn’t be forced onto me if I prefer (e.g.) 4 spaces per tab. As long as you’re on your machine, you’ll see exactly the amount of code indentation you prefer - not something “random”. On someone else’s machine, well, that’s up to their preference, and it’s hard to complain about how someone else has the…

So when things don't line up... That's a feature? The reason I use indentation is so there's consistency between lines. When you use spaces, the semantics of indentation are maintained. If you don't like the indentation settings, just change them in the v-linter.

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

#193

Post by hamandcheese »

jiggawatts wrote: post #137
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interned at an IBM R&D site in Winchester (UK) for a year in 1988-89 and none of us interns wore suits, or even ties. I don't recall many of the f/t IBMers doing so either. It was pretty informal really. (Not disputing your story, just providing a different perspective.)

I work with a lot of government departments. The "policy" is not a thing that can enforce itself, and often barely exists at all. Rarely is it actually written down! Mostly these things boil down to a vetocracy where all managers in some hierarch must say 'yes', otherwise a single 'no' is a final 'no'. Hence, the trick is not to ask because the more people are involved the higher the chance that one of them will say…

> The corollary to that is a clever bureaucrat can kill a proposal simply by inviting many decision makers to a meeting.

My version of this:

For my friends, everything; for my enemies, pull security in.

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

#194

Post by sowbug »

K7PJP wrote: post #160

I've been a Mac user for 30+ years, but I love Raymond Chen's historical posts. I'm aware of folklore.org, but I wish there were something equivalent within Apple itself. Sadly, it's not part of Apple's culture.

I can't do anything about Apple's culture, but it's been long enough that I doubt anyone would mind if I shared a story.

It was 1992. I was a summer intern on the System Software team. One of my projects was to improve a Disk Initialization Package feature to mark bad blocks found during disk init. The existing feature worked, but it was super slow, it didn't show progress, and it wasn't cancellable.

The UI was the trickiest part. I'd improved the speed a lot, but we still couldn't know how long the whole process would take, so every heuristic I used to show remaining time was awful.

I noticed this guy a few cubicles down had a "User Interface" title, so I wondered whether he'd be able to help. I asked him if he had a minute, and sat down and hashed it out with Apple employee #4, Bill Fernandez, the person who introduced the two Steves to each other.

He was truly the nicest person I met that summer, other than my manager. He completely understood the problem instantly and came up with a great solution: ditch the time estimate and replace it with an indeterminate progress bar that advanced as each disk track was tested. It worked, people liked it, and it shipped with the point release after 7.1.

Not quite as gee-whiz as any of Raymond's articles, but it's a start!

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

#195

Post by pseudalopex »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #29
INTPenis wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non english speaker trying to wrap my head around what Brendan said to you. 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?

BTW, Douglas Crockford had an interesting argument in favour of spaces, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En8Ubs2k1O8

What of Crockford's argument interested you?

The typewriter history was irrelevant.

He said people argued how wide should a tab be. And this caused misery. But almost all tabs advocates said tabs should be any width you want in my experience. And spaces advocates argued how many spaces should indentation be.

He said there was no value in the conflict. There is value in accessibility.[1][2]

He said tabs could be eliminated and spaces could not. Spaces could be eliminated for indentation. And indentation could replace alignment with initial spaces.[3]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20341354

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20381027

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20341788

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

#196

Post by justsomehnguy »

xp84 wrote: post #139
justsomehnguy wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speak for yourself. I prefer SHIFT, I have too much muscle memory with CTRL+ZXCV and just pushing down CTRL down with an edge of my palm.

Is that how you do it? I have always used my left pinky. As I try it, unless I'm moving my hands off home row, both Ctrls feel just too far to be confident I'm hitting the right one (and not hitting the modifiers second in from the edges, and not hitting both). Maybe it's just my small hands! In terms of ergonomics, the curled-left-thumb "Command" activation (it's where Alt is on a normal keyboard) is my favorite thi…

Depends.

Sometimes it's pinky on the CTRL and index on AZXCV ie the hand lower/closer to me.

Sometimes it's pushing CTRL with an edge of the hand and with the fingers on the ASDF to press AFRCVB.

Sometimes it's my hand on ESDF with run around in Zandronum and pushing CTRL with an edge of the hand to invoke 'invuseall'.

The main driver for moving SHIFT to CAPSLOCK is what SHIFT is used way more common than CTRL and with my big hands it gets quite uncomfortable for my pinky to used too much in an awkward shrimp mode.

NB on a non-laptop keyboards I flip both Windows/Super keycaps upside-down, helps a bit.

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

#197

Post by ThrowawayB7 »

rbanffy wrote: post #147
MoonWalk wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"To be fair, Microsoft & Bill Gates are bad at quality user experience." In some ways. Gates deserves never-ending enmity for plaguing us with backslashes in paths. But in others, Microsoft advanced the state of UI and UX more than anyone else in the '90s. "Would of?"

> Microsoft advanced the state of UI and UX more than anyone else in the '90s. There is no universe where that is true.

And the contemporaneous counterexamples are what? The various UNIX windows managers and X11? System 6-8 on the '90s Macs? None of those were great UI/UX IMO.

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

#198

Post by xigoi »

donatj wrote: post #118
OhMeadhbh wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes. That is the point. I can have my tabs look the way I like them. You can have your tabs look the way you like them.

Until you open your code somewhere where you can’t configure the tab size, such as on SourceHut or other forges.

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

#199

Post by ivankelly »

Animats wrote: post #44
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…

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…

Arrow keys are giving swastika vibes, which I guess fits given IBM’s history

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

#200

Post by OhMeadhbh »

xigoi wrote: post #198
donatj wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. That is the point. I can have my tabs look the way I like them. You can have your tabs look the way you like them.

Until you open your code somewhere where you can’t configure the tab size, such as on SourceHut or other forges.

Or if you have your tabs set at 3 and I have mine set to 4 and you want to indent something 6 characters so you enter two tabs. When the code gets back to me it's indented 8 spaces and nothing lines up anymore. So I change it to one tab and 2 spaces and when it gets back to you it's indented 5 spaces instead of 6, so you change it back to two tabs and we spend our time indenting code to make it readable instead of doing our jobs

We had such vicious battles at Convex we wrote a tool that "canonicalized" code before it was checked in and then "decanonicalized" after checking out. There were issues with comments, but they were manageable.

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