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Key symbols we lost to time, pt. 1: The PC side
- VCFundedGenYer 5d agoInsert 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.
- chrishill89 5d agoI learned about proofreaders marks when my master’s advisor would print out my draft and mark it up with a pen.
- spijdar 5d agoNot 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.
- Permik 5d agoI 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.
- scrlk 5d agoSpeculation on my part, but could it be a tweaked version of Metcalfe's original sketch for Ethernet? https://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/may/22/ https://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/may/22/ >-< in the sketch turned in to the <...> symbol?
- CalRobert 5d agoInsert 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"
- pmontra 5d agoSometimes it is handy when doing something like ASCII art or drawing ASCII diagrams. Imagine editing a much more complex variant of this ---- | AB | ---- 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. I always use middle click, which is a hardware button below my touchpad and it is one more saved keypress.
- leephillips 5d agoMy 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.
- SilasX 5d agoHm 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.
- CalRobert 5d agoI think I used it most in the odd game... I recall it may have activated stealth in Subspace (Continuum)
- nosrepa 5d agoShift+insert is paste in situations where you can't ctrl+v
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- Findecanor 5d agoReverse 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)
- deleted 5d ago[deleted]
- leephillips 5d agoThis article is the first time I’ve heard of the reverse tab. What is it?
- tpm 5d agoMove one tab backwards. So in form fields move one field back, in text editor indent one tab less etc.
- mock-possum 5d agoAka shift+tab, or shift+ctrl+tab
- card_zero 5d ago"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
- jstanley 5d agoThe Insert key toggles insert mode.
- em3rgent0rdr 5d agoMind blown: we have always by default been in insert mode.
- wging 5d agoThe 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.
- myself248 5d ago> "Key beep" sounds horrific. :D And yet, every computer in a TV show seems to have it enabled!