Key symbols we lost to time, pt. 1: The PC side
unsung.aresluna.orgReverse Tab ⇤ is still with us, above the Tab ⇥ symbol. It is at the top to indicate that it is generated while holding Shift.
Many people have got the misconception that both symbols together is the Tab symbol, though. There is even a symbol consisting of both close together in Unicode: ⭾ and many PC keyboards that similarly have both arrows closer together than on keys with printed symbols generated with and without holding Shift. (Apple has been printing only ⇥ though)
This article is the first time I’ve heard of the reverse tab. What is it?
Move one tab backwards. So in form fields move one field back, in text editor indent one tab less etc.
Aka shift+tab, or shift+ctrl+tab
Insert and Print Screen are not gone. Every one of my keyboards (with the exception of Macbooks) has Insert.
Meanwhile, Print Screen is very much a staple of Windows and Linux screenshotting.
Reverse Tab is kind of still around, just as Shift Tab and Ctrl Tab.
I don't know what the author was thinking when they wrote that.
The keys still exist but the symbols have gone
The article states “Insert (now gone) and Delete (still with us)”. Since the Delete symbol pictured is long gone, it seems reasonable to conclude that the author meant the keys here, not the symbols.
Insert is gone? I have it here... though I can't remember the last time I used it. I never found much reason to think "I want to overwrite existing text as I type"
Sometimes it is handy when doing something like ASCII art or drawing ASCII diagrams. Imagine editing a much more complex variant of this
Finally, Shift-INS pastes from clipboard on Linux. A keypress saved compared to Control Shift V in a terminal. However they don't paste from the same clipboard: one is the primary selection (middle click) the other is the actual clipboard. However when I Shift INS into this textarea on HN I paste something else so I don't really know the rule and I stop here.---- | AB | ----I always use middle click, which is a hardware button below my touchpad and it is one more saved keypress.
I use it quite regularly in text editors, in particular when authoring something with two-dimensional layout (simple diagrams, folder-like line trees), and occasionally for the CUA Cut & Paste shortcuts (e.g. in terminal emulators).
There’s also a number of applications where it has a useful binding, such as marking a task as (un)complete in Outlook, or (un)flagging an email.
My keyboards have always had an INS key but they’ve never done anything and I’ve never bothered to map them to anything. I do sometimes want to overwrite, but that’s always in Vim where I can enter replace mode.
I think I used it most in the odd game... I recall it may have activated stealth in Subspace (Continuum)
Shift+insert is paste in situations where you can't ctrl+v
Hm I've seen keyboards where INS didn't appear to do anything, but that was because you had to press a different button to activate the set of keys that includes INS, and you might have been looking at a case of that.
Not really relevant to keyboard symbols, and not PC symbols, and it's not really lost to time, but does anyone know where the Ethernet symbol used on Apple products (and ... Android???) comes from? You know, the <...> symbol.
It's most prominently seen and probably associated with Apple products, going back to the first Macs with Ethernet (the Quadra 700/900). It's also used, bizarrely IMO, as the Android Ethernet symbol.
However, I've also seen it on one other type of computer -- Sun/SPARC systems. And on those systems (1990+), it predates the Apple usage on the Quadra (1991+), with at least my IPC having the <...> symbol for Ethernet over the AUI port. (not sure if Apple's NuBus NICs had it or not). Further, it's used on some of my RDI SPARC systems, with a different font.
Someone had to decide to use this symbol first, and I've always wanted to know who. It's distinct from the "iconography" that everyone else uses for Ethernet, and has survived to this day in its weird little Apple (and Android??) branch.
I don't have the answers, but I'm speculating that it has developed first from being a skeuomorphic text representation depicting a modem/ethernet port, but then just being re-used outside the original and slowly evolving to what it is currently.
Probably not, as modems connected to Macs via a round serial port identified by a phone icon and Ethernet ports were originally AAUI (D-shaped transciever port similar to AUI but with a smaller connector) or, on some of the old NuBus cards, 10BASE2 (coaxial).
I suspect it's just a stylized double-ended arrow representing bidirectional data transfer, created because Apple (or whoever) needed a localization-agnostic way to represent "Ethernet" on hardware.
That sounds like "MII" -- the 100mb version of AUI?
Apple used a mechanical variant of AUI called AAUI[1] with a smaller connector.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Attachment_Unit_Interfac...
I live these types of posts. Everything is always changing. For keyboards ist keys, symbols and layouts. Who can imagine not having several modifiers and just not knowing how and when to use them.
I particularly enjoyed learning the origin of the symbols, for shift, enter tab and backspace and how they survived as text replaced their siblings. I wish we could have symbols for therefore and approximatly.
As someone who has designed and built a few keyboards, this was fascinating.
"Insert, now gone"? I press the INS key, I overwrite text, it's very useful. Though thinking about it I suppose that really turns insert mode off.
"Key beep" sounds horrific. :D
The article is talking about symbols that were lost. The sentence should be interpreted as "these [symbols], for Insert (now gone) and Delete (still with us)". The photo is of a symbol for 'insert', an 'a' with a caret above it.
It probably makes sense with a silent linear keyswitch for users who are used to the obvious acoustic feedback of a typewriter.
Since cheap modern MCUs have programmable ADCs, you can wiggle an output pin and experiment with different sounds. I've tried something a bit more "tinkle" like than a flat "beep" and it has its charms, but it could go a whole new place like different tones for special keys (simulating the clunk of a shift or space bar) or even keys that you could subtly differentiate by sound to tell if you're off alignment.
If it's anything like the key sounds on old DEC systems, it's more akin to the key click sound on an iPhone than a beep.
The Insert key toggles insert mode.
Mind blown: we have always by default been in insert mode.
Commodore 64 was by default in overwrite mode.
When I switched to PC being in insert mode took some getting used to.
Originally, in the days of text-mode forms, overwrite was the default, because that made more sense for fixed-length input fields.
Not in vi. :)
> "Key beep" sounds horrific. :D
And yet, every computer in a TV show seems to have it enabled!
I learned about proofreaders marks when my master’s advisor would print out my draft and mark it up with a pen.