9 ms·

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

by ch_123 5mo ago

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_Display_Station_Operators_Guide_Feb84.pdf 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 fields was important enough on IBM terminals that they had a dedicated "back tab" key located on the opposite end of the keyboard to the tab key. On the original IBM PC, they decided to combine both functions into a single key. As a result, the tab key on the classic PC keyboard features the symbols for both forwards tab and back tab on the same key, the back tab symbol being on top to indicate that you need to hold down shift to use that function. EDIT: The 5250 series terminals used the terms "Field Advance" and "Field Backspace" instead of Tab and Back Tab, but otherwise they used the same symbol on the keys, and the keys were located in roughly the same position as the 3270 series. Reference: https://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/5291/GA21-9409-0_5291_Display_Operators_Guide_198212.pdf https://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/5291/GA21-9409-0_5291_Disp...

ButlerianJihad 4mo ago
I am trying to think of other older examples, but I know I have seen it before Workspaces/Chromebook: The upstart adopts all the keyboard shortcuts of the dominant player. Then the existing userbase is comfortable... compatible, with the new and different software. Then, slowly but surely, new novel shortcuts are introduced and you gradually find the “compatible” ones vanishing or conflicting or just glitched, until one day you’re no longer capable of using Apple or Word or Netscape or Excel. I propose that IBM saw that coming, and fought against a future where IBM-trained users easily adopted someone else’s apps.
SirFatty 5mo ago
And this is a great example of why I read the comments on HN stories... thanks for the info! RIP /.
ChuckMcM 5mo ago
Having worked at IBM, I would guess that using the tab key in this way was part of a patent they were pursuing and Microsoft's use would show this to be 'obvious' and thus not patentable. But that is just a guess. In the 80's IBM had a whole class of high level technical people called "Systems Engineers" whose entire job description was to opine on the merits of any given system. Not write systems, not debug them, and certainly not to explain them, it was simply to opine "you're doing it wrong."
- MoonWalk 5mo ago
  Microsoft is suffering from the lack of such a group today; they're definitely doing it wrong, where "it" is pretty much everything... except pissing off users.
  - coredog64 5mo ago
    Microsoft could implement the "Am I doing it wrong?" check via the shell script `/bin/true`
    - Henchman21 5mo ago
      They’d need to install WSL2 first though!
      - rbanffy 5mo ago
        A TRUE: device?
        Henchman21 5mo ago
        As long as I can plug in a serial console and it endlessly spits out 1s!
      - Nition 5mo ago
        It's a Linux subsystem for Windows so we'll call it Windows Subsystem For Linux.
MoonWalk 5mo ago
Also conspicuously missing from the story is what key IBM DID want to use. I mean... that's the first question you'd ask! Lame.
- Tempest1981 5mo ago
  Ctrl-F6 ?
  - OhMeadhbh 5mo ago
    Shift Ctrl F6
- yndoendo 5mo ago
  It looks like it they wanted to use their existing special field management keys (field advance and field backspace) with tab being a different user experience. [0] Document does even use the word "Tab". "Field Backspace" seems to duplicate "Home" key usage under some conditions. To be fair, Microsoft & Bill Gates are bad at quality user experience. "Ctrl+F" differs through their applications. [0] https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_ibm525xGA2onDisplaySystemFunctionsReferenceManualM_8040964/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_ibm525xGA2onDisplaySys... *Edited. The more I think of it the current TAB (SHIFT+TAB) key should of been used for entry navigation navigation only while the white space tab should of been something such as "SHIFT+SPACE".
  - canucker2016 4mo ago
    Not sure the case that the parent refers to, but there's a good reason that CTRL-F in the Win95/Exchange Mail client and Outlook will invoke the Forward email message command. It goes back to what is the common action that the user would perform in the app. Forwarding an email is more common that Finding text in an email - at least to Billg. see https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20140715-00/?p=503 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20140715-00/?p=50...
  - MoonWalk 5mo ago
    "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?"
Animats 5mo ago
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 numeric fields. That was all done by the terminal. When the form was filled in, the user pressed ENTER, and the completed form was sent to the mainframe as one transaction. This approach let one mainframe service huge numbers of terminals. The user never experienced delays while typing and could type at full speed, often without looking. PCs didn't have that usage model. The PC crowd was thinking "typewriter". One of the first terminals for home computers was called the "TV Typewriter". Web forms do have that model, but with less consistency. [1] https://sharktastica.co.uk/resources/images/model_bs/themk_1825028_ibm.jpg https://sharktastica.co.uk/resources/images/model_bs/themk_1...
- jasomill 5mo ago
  My favorite feature of 3270/5250-style keyboard layouts is the separate carriage return and Enter keys, allowing for multiline text entry without special handling to avoid conflicts with the command to signify that input is complete. With only a single combined Enter/Return key, it's hard to remember in any given context whether Shift+Enter or Control+Enter will open up a new line instead of immediately sending a message, dismissing a dialog box, completing input into a particular spreadsheet cell, editable filename, text object in a drawing program, etc., or whether I need to copy/paste a line break from another application because no such shortcut exists at all.
  - rmunn 4mo ago
    The software I've used has been pretty consistent about Shift+Enter meaning "new line without triggering the Enter key action" and Ctrl+Enter meaning "action" (send the message, go to the next field, etc). The behavior of the Enter key varies from program to program, but I have yet to find a program where Shift+Enter triggered an action while Ctrl+Enter did not. Which software are you using where Shift+Enter triggers an action? (I do agree that it's hard to remember what Enter is going to do, of course. It's just Shift+Enter where my experience differs from yours).
sedatk 5mo ago
From what I remember, there were two "Enter/Return" keys on IBM 3270 terminals. One was the regular "Return" key we have today, which just advanced to the next field, and didn't submit the form. There was also another "Enter" key where the Right Ctrl key is today, and that submitted the form. So, I presume, instead of being against Tab key, IBM might be against "Return" to be the form submit key as people who use 3270 would expect it to advance to the next field. And that was true for many DOS programs. Pressing Return would just go to the next field, not submit the form. That was one of the things that needed some getting used to on Windows.
- ch_123 5mo ago
  Your memory is correct, and it's interesting to note that on the IBM terminal keyboards, the Enter key was marked "Enter", and the return/new line key was marked "↵". On the classic IBM PC keyboards such as the Model M, the Enter key is marked "↵ Enter". I believe IBM chose this to convey that the Enter key on the PC was both an "Enter" _and_ "Return" key in one. As you say though - individual applications got to chose what that meant in practice, leading to inconsistent behavior.
logickkk1 5mo ago
Funnily enough, IBM had already published this. CUA explicitly says tab and backtab move between fields. so they spent seven layers of management escalating against their own standard: https://archive.org/details/ibmsj2703E/page/n13/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/ibmsj2703E/page/n13/mode/2up
- mrandish 5mo ago
  Not being familiar with the term CUA, I looked it up and TIL something (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access). Since the doc you linked is dated 1988 and CUA was a brand new thing circa OS/2 (at least in traditional IBM timescales), the apparent inconsistency might be down to the massive scale of IBM in those days and organizational propagation delay. Another factor could be still-reverberating echoes of the likely political battles around something as broad and far-reaching as CUA. I can only imagine the quiet boardroom battles won and lost fighting over CUA between different factions across all of IBM's kingdoms, divisions and principalities.
mrandish 5mo ago
> IBM was consistent with their keyboard nomenclature across multiple products, and the 3270 series mainframe terminals used the Tab key While it seems odd in light of IBM's usual adherence to corporate norms across business units, having read a couple different books on the origins of the PC at IBM, it may be related to the entire PC unit in Boca being an extraordinary aberration outside the norm for IBM. Despite seeming hopelessly corporate to the Microsoft team, the Boca IBMers were considered a "Rebel Unit" inside IBM - when they were considered at all, since the vast majority of IBM wasn't even aware of it. Due to being started virtually overnight (in IBM timescales), running incredibly fast and only existing thanks to Thomas Watson, Jr. himself overruling his lieutenants to approve such a "skunk works", Boca didn't have nearly the level of oversight, coordination or control as an effort that size normally would. In the early days Boca ran largely outside normal reporting channels and when they'd try to source tech or components from other parts of IBM, had to sometimes clarify that they were in fact part of IBM.

by ch_123 5mo ago

ButlerianJihad 4mo ago

I am trying to think of other older examples, but I know I have seen it before Workspaces/Chromebook: The upstart adopts all the keyboard shortcuts of the dominant player. Then the existing userbase is comfortable... compatible, with the new and different software. Then, slowly but surely, new novel shortcuts are introduced and you gradually find the “compatible” ones vanishing or conflicting or just glitched, until one day you’re no longer capable of using Apple or Word or Netscape or Excel. I propose that IBM saw that coming, and fought against a future where IBM-trained users easily adopted someone else’s apps.

SirFatty 5mo ago

And this is a great example of why I read the comments on HN stories... thanks for the info! RIP /.

ChuckMcM 5mo ago

Having worked at IBM, I would guess that using the tab key in this way was part of a patent they were pursuing and Microsoft's use would show this to be 'obvious' and thus not patentable. But that is just a guess. In the 80's IBM had a whole class of high level technical people called "Systems Engineers" whose entire job description was to opine on the merits of any given system. Not write systems, not debug them, and certainly not to explain them, it was simply to opine "you're doing it wrong."

MoonWalk 5mo ago
Microsoft is suffering from the lack of such a group today; they're definitely doing it wrong, where "it" is pretty much everything... except pissing off users.
- coredog64 5mo ago
  Microsoft could implement the "Am I doing it wrong?" check via the shell script `/bin/true`
  - Henchman21 5mo ago
    They’d need to install WSL2 first though!
    - rbanffy 5mo ago
      A TRUE: device?
      - Henchman21 5mo ago
        As long as I can plug in a serial console and it endlessly spits out 1s!
    - Nition 5mo ago
      It's a Linux subsystem for Windows so we'll call it Windows Subsystem For Linux.

MoonWalk 5mo ago

Also conspicuously missing from the story is what key IBM DID want to use. I mean... that's the first question you'd ask! Lame.

Tempest1981 5mo ago
Ctrl-F6 ?
- OhMeadhbh 5mo ago
  Shift Ctrl F6
yndoendo 5mo ago
It looks like it they wanted to use their existing special field management keys (field advance and field backspace) with tab being a different user experience. [0] Document does even use the word "Tab". "Field Backspace" seems to duplicate "Home" key usage under some conditions. To be fair, Microsoft & Bill Gates are bad at quality user experience. "Ctrl+F" differs through their applications. [0] https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_ibm525xGA2onDisplaySystemFunctionsReferenceManualM_8040964/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_ibm525xGA2onDisplaySys... *Edited. The more I think of it the current TAB (SHIFT+TAB) key should of been used for entry navigation navigation only while the white space tab should of been something such as "SHIFT+SPACE".
- canucker2016 4mo ago
  Not sure the case that the parent refers to, but there's a good reason that CTRL-F in the Win95/Exchange Mail client and Outlook will invoke the Forward email message command. It goes back to what is the common action that the user would perform in the app. Forwarding an email is more common that Finding text in an email - at least to Billg. see https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20140715-00/?p=503 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20140715-00/?p=50...
- MoonWalk 5mo ago
  "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?"

Animats 5mo ago

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 numeric fields. That was all done by the terminal. When the form was filled in, the user pressed ENTER, and the completed form was sent to the mainframe as one transaction. This approach let one mainframe service huge numbers of terminals. The user never experienced delays while typing and could type at full speed, often without looking. PCs didn't have that usage model. The PC crowd was thinking "typewriter". One of the first terminals for home computers was called the "TV Typewriter". Web forms do have that model, but with less consistency. [1] https://sharktastica.co.uk/resources/images/model_bs/themk_1825028_ibm.jpg https://sharktastica.co.uk/resources/images/model_bs/themk_1...

jasomill 5mo ago
My favorite feature of 3270/5250-style keyboard layouts is the separate carriage return and Enter keys, allowing for multiline text entry without special handling to avoid conflicts with the command to signify that input is complete. With only a single combined Enter/Return key, it's hard to remember in any given context whether Shift+Enter or Control+Enter will open up a new line instead of immediately sending a message, dismissing a dialog box, completing input into a particular spreadsheet cell, editable filename, text object in a drawing program, etc., or whether I need to copy/paste a line break from another application because no such shortcut exists at all.
- rmunn 4mo ago
  The software I've used has been pretty consistent about Shift+Enter meaning "new line without triggering the Enter key action" and Ctrl+Enter meaning "action" (send the message, go to the next field, etc). The behavior of the Enter key varies from program to program, but I have yet to find a program where Shift+Enter triggered an action while Ctrl+Enter did not. Which software are you using where Shift+Enter triggers an action? (I do agree that it's hard to remember what Enter is going to do, of course. It's just Shift+Enter where my experience differs from yours).

sedatk 5mo ago

From what I remember, there were two "Enter/Return" keys on IBM 3270 terminals. One was the regular "Return" key we have today, which just advanced to the next field, and didn't submit the form. There was also another "Enter" key where the Right Ctrl key is today, and that submitted the form. So, I presume, instead of being against Tab key, IBM might be against "Return" to be the form submit key as people who use 3270 would expect it to advance to the next field. And that was true for many DOS programs. Pressing Return would just go to the next field, not submit the form. That was one of the things that needed some getting used to on Windows.

ch_123 5mo ago
Your memory is correct, and it's interesting to note that on the IBM terminal keyboards, the Enter key was marked "Enter", and the return/new line key was marked "↵". On the classic IBM PC keyboards such as the Model M, the Enter key is marked "↵ Enter". I believe IBM chose this to convey that the Enter key on the PC was both an "Enter" _and_ "Return" key in one. As you say though - individual applications got to chose what that meant in practice, leading to inconsistent behavior.

logickkk1 5mo ago

Funnily enough, IBM had already published this. CUA explicitly says tab and backtab move between fields. so they spent seven layers of management escalating against their own standard: https://archive.org/details/ibmsj2703E/page/n13/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/ibmsj2703E/page/n13/mode/2up

mrandish 5mo ago
Not being familiar with the term CUA, I looked it up and TIL something (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access). Since the doc you linked is dated 1988 and CUA was a brand new thing circa OS/2 (at least in traditional IBM timescales), the apparent inconsistency might be down to the massive scale of IBM in those days and organizational propagation delay. Another factor could be still-reverberating echoes of the likely political battles around something as broad and far-reaching as CUA. I can only imagine the quiet boardroom battles won and lost fighting over CUA between different factions across all of IBM's kingdoms, divisions and principalities.

mrandish 5mo ago

> IBM was consistent with their keyboard nomenclature across multiple products, and the 3270 series mainframe terminals used the Tab key While it seems odd in light of IBM's usual adherence to corporate norms across business units, having read a couple different books on the origins of the PC at IBM, it may be related to the entire PC unit in Boca being an extraordinary aberration outside the norm for IBM. Despite seeming hopelessly corporate to the Microsoft team, the Boca IBMers were considered a "Rebel Unit" inside IBM - when they were considered at all, since the vast majority of IBM wasn't even aware of it. Due to being started virtually overnight (in IBM timescales), running incredibly fast and only existing thanks to Thomas Watson, Jr. himself overruling his lieutenants to approve such a "skunk works", Boca didn't have nearly the level of oversight, coordination or control as an effort that size normally would. In the early days Boca ran largely outside normal reporting channels and when they'd try to source tech or components from other parts of IBM, had to sometimes clarify that they were in fact part of IBM.