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

51–60 of 179 posts

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#51

Post by rswail »

gyomu wrote: post #17
userbinator wrote: post #14

To me, "return" implies a "go back" action (like "backspace"), which is the opposite of "enter", so naming the key the latter makes more sense. Plenty of TUIs used the arrow keys, Backspace, and Enter for navigation. Also, the text is nicely readable but none of the images are viewable.

As I understand it, "return" is a shorthand for "carriage return" - as on typewriters, going to a new line meant returning the carriage to its original (start of line) position.

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 paper itself.

The carriage return physical device on the typewriter combined moving the carriage (which could be done by hand) and the rolling of the paper up one line (which could also be done by hand) into one convenient motion.

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#52

Post by rswail »

strken wrote: post #41

When the essay says "a literal tooth", does it really mean a literal calcium tooth from some animal's mouth?

There was a metal tooth that the shift lock engaged on the shift key below it, effectively "locking" the key carriage in place in the "shifted" position (caps lock for alphabetic characters, the "special" characters for the numerics).

To release it, you either pressed the shift key down, or pressed the shift lock again to "unlock" the shift.

No animals were harmed by the implementation of the tooth :)

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#53

Post by maxlin »

Good read, I didn't realize how much diversity there was in those buttons. Thought it was just a few different options!

in CR LF, the LF being there to account for timing as its tolerant of the return process still being in progress is genius.

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#54

Post by Doxin »

kimixa wrote: post #27

I remember back in the day I had a demo disc where one of the installers (I think it was Theme Park?) had a prompt of "Press return to quit, press enter to continue". And that confused single-digit-years me for a surprising amount of time, as there wasn't, to my mind, a real difference between the two keys. Even then I assume it was really a troll as much as anything else.

Perhaps a confused translation of escape/enter happening there? I don't think there's many (if any) PCs with both a return key and an enter key.

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#57

Post by rswail »

chowells wrote: post #8
SoftTalker wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And of course ASCII separates them, with LF (linefeed, sometimes called newline) and CR (carriage return, or just return) being two separate characters. Windows (and probably some other) text file conventions used CR+LF to end a line, while unix conventions used just LF (hence the alternate name of "newline").

In line printers, a line feed moves the paper forward one line. A carriage return moves the print head back to the start of a line. You can do interesting things by making them separate commands, like bold text (overstrike) or underlining, so they were independent commands for talking to a line printer. ASCII standardized on a character set containing control codes for line printers, so it included CR and LF separate…

Line printers (also "chain printers" from IBM) used "form feed" to move the paper to the next "form", which for the most part was moving the tractor fed paper to the line after the page perforations.

The printers either kept track of the number of lines printed "so far", or, in the case of a chain printer, there was a literal chain (similar to an engine timing belt) that had a particular location that was supposed to be aligned with the paper perforation.

Standard tractor feed paper had a printable area that was 132 monospaced characters wide (13.2") and 11" high. Tractor feed paper had the holes at a standard distance apart vertically and a standard margin to allow for the tractor holes and an area before printing, so that the paper could also have vertical perforations to remove the tractor feed paper after printing.

Teletypes were 72 characters wide and 0.1" line height and used continuous paper rolls.

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#58

Post by jama211 »

aag wrote: post #15

What a wonderful essay. I learned to type on a manual Underwood typewriter with a carriage return lever. I don't miss it, but there was something so satisfying about moving that lever and feeling the whole carriage move. It meant that I had typed another line, and had made progress. The thing I truly don't miss was not being able to afford a new ribbon, and having to move back over every character and type it again t…

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…

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#59

Post by jama211 »

aldto wrote: post #37
wpm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every Apple keyboard, even the iPhone I’m typing this comment on, has had a Return key. Only the Num Pad has an Enter key on Apple’s keyboards.

And Fn+Return can be used for Enter if the keyboard doesn't have a Num Pad, for the few Applications that use it.

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

Re: The day Return became Enter (2023)

#60

Post by brianpan »

Doxin wrote: post #54
kimixa wrote: post #27

I remember back in the day I had a demo disc where one of the installers (I think it was Theme Park?) had a prompt of "Press return to quit, press enter to continue". And that confused single-digit-years me for a surprising amount of time, as there wasn't, to my mind, a real difference between the two keys. Even then I assume it was really a troll as much as anything else.

Perhaps a confused translation of escape/enter happening there? I don't think there's many (if any) PCs with both a return key and an enter key.

My experience is with IBM AT and OS 2 which had a Return and a numpad with an Enter. The AT and Model M keyboard at least were part of a very popular and influential generation or two of "PC".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_M_keyboard

EDIT: Holy cow, those Model M pictures are so nostalgic.

Post reply on HN