Why Ctrl-v for Paste?!
Adrian Thompson
Can anyone out there tell me why Windows uses Ctrl-V as a keyboard
shortcut for Paste? I've just been asked by one fo the children here, and
I realised I have no idea!
Thanks,
Adrian Thompson
Laisterdyke GM Middle School
IT Technician
http://www.schoolsite.edex.net.uk/365/index.htm
http://www.athompson.mcmail.com
Scott
of the most common operations: Undo, Cut, Copy and Paste. Simply because
they are close to the control key on most keyboards.
That's also probably why the emacs editor uses Ctrl-X and Ctrl-C for it's
common commands too. (Ctrl-Z is already taken to mean suspend the program.)
All that is just a guess of course.
Adrian Thompson wrote in message ...
C Lamb
: Hi.
: Can anyone out there tell me why Windows uses Ctrl-V as a keyboard
: shortcut for Paste? I've just been asked by one fo the children here, and
: I realised I have no idea!
I suppose, but don't treat as gospel, that since cut is ctrl-x - analogous
to the 'del char' in vi and the shape of 'x' looks like crossing something
out and copy is ctrl-c - well, the first letter of copy is 'c', the next
key combination is, well, ctrl-v. Makes a happy little block of keys.
C
: Thanks,
John Birch
wrote:
>Hi.
>Can anyone out there tell me why Windows uses Ctrl-V as a keyboard
>shortcut for Paste? I've just been asked by one fo the children here, and
>I realised I have no idea!
>
Does it???
I always use Ctrl Insert (to cut) and Shift Insert (to paste) !
I think you might find that the key combos for Winxyz change as MS
decide it's time to obsolete old versions of their software.
<Winge>
I still can't work out why you can't highlight a section of something
and just press delete and insert to paste but have to use control key
as well.
;-)
</Winge>
regards John B.
Sean Case
Thompson) wrote:
> Can anyone out there tell me why Windows uses Ctrl-V as a keyboard
> shortcut for Paste? I've just been asked by one fo the children here, and
> I realised I have no idea!
... because they ripped it off from the Macintosh, which reserves the
keys Command-Z, Command-X, Command-C, and Command-V for Undo, Cut, Copy,
and Paste respectively. Note that these letters occupy the bottom left
corner of the keyboard, and so these command combinations are fairly
easy to type with the left hand while holding the mouse with the right.
Sean Case
--
Sean Case g...@zipworld.com.au
Code is an illusion. Only assertions are real.
D. Peschel
>The most obvious reason is that Ctrl Z, X, C, V are most convenient for some
>of the most common operations: Undo, Cut, Copy and Paste. Simply because
>they are close to the control key on most keyboards.
Right. And they are the same on the Macintosh -- the standard shortcuts
look like this:
q w e r t y u i o p
quit close open print
a s d f g h j k l ;
save
z x c v b n m , . /
undo cut copy paste new cancel
The command key (which you use to modify a character to become a shortcut)
is to the left of the spacebar. (Many keyboards have one to the right, but
I've never trained myself to use it.)
The "open" and "save" commands act on files. The "close" and "print"
commands deal with the current window/document. The "new" command creates a
new window/document. The "undo", "cut", "copy", and "paste" commands deal
with the current selection. And "cancel" chooses the "Cancel" button in a
dialog box. It also gets rid of the annoying "Please insert the disk: ___"
notices that sometimes pop up. Most software now accepts Esc as well.
Most programs define other shortcuts. The conventions have changed over the
years. When programs can use only one character (instead of two, as in
Windows' case) they tend to be creative or even totally opaque. But the
system works well enough for common commands that the "core" shortcuts
haven't changed since the late 80's.
Too bad Windows still has a lot of its CUA keys -- Alt-F4 for close is
completely counterintuitive. Shift-Ins (or whatever) for paste is almost as
bad, and awkward to use. Luckily, Microsoft knows a good feature when it
sees one. :)
-- Derek
-- Derek
David Spencer
wrote:
>Hi.
>Can anyone out there tell me why Windows uses Ctrl-V as a keyboard
>shortcut for Paste? I've just been asked by one fo the children here, and
>I realised I have no idea!
Other posters have pointed out that it's geographically related to
Ctrl-X and Ctrl-C, but they've missed that Windows (and the Mac, yeah,
yeah) use Ctrl-X for 'cut' because it's the ASCII 'CAN' (cancel)
character, and has been used for discarding a line of typed input for
about as long as CR (Ctrl-M, carriage return) has been used to terminate
a line of typed input. (ie, only about twenty years actually)
>Adrian Thompson
>Laisterdyke GM Middle School
>IT Technician
I bet I'm the only geezer here who knows that Laisterdyke is an early
19th century corruption of Lister Dyke...
--
David Spencer
Logica BT OMC Team, Martlesham MLB-2
These are personal opinions, not shared by Logica or BT.
Samael
John Birch wrote in message <36948e3e...@news.demon.co.uk>...
><Winge>
>I still can't work out why you can't highlight a section of something
>and just press delete and insert to paste but have to use control key
>as well.
Because frequently I want to copy something, delete something else adn then
paste what I just cut into the space.
It therefore makes sense to seperate the delete and cut functions.
Samael
Tom Harrington
: In article <MPG.10fea95f4...@172.16.1.5>, He...@there.com (Adrian
: Thompson) wrote:
: > Can anyone out there tell me why Windows uses Ctrl-V as a keyboard
: > shortcut for Paste? I've just been asked by one fo the children here, and
: > I realised I have no idea!
: ... because they ripped it off from the Macintosh, which reserves the
: keys Command-Z, Command-X, Command-C, and Command-V for Undo, Cut, Copy,
: and Paste respectively.
Did they? Remember that MS Word was originally written for the Macintosh.
MS may have gotten these shortcuts from Macs, but they would already have
been using them anyway for their Mac software.
And anyway, these shortcuts predate the Mac. IIRC they go back at least
to WordStar, sometime in the late 1970s.
--
Tom Harrington --------- t...@rmii.com -------- http://rainbow.rmii.com/~tph
"Have you ever had your phones tapped by the government? YOU WILL and
the company that'll bring it to you..... AT&T" -evid...@netcom.com
Cookie's Revenge: ftp://ftp.rmi.net/pub2/tph/cookie/cookies-revenge.sit.hqx
TheCentralSc...@pobox.com
>Hi.
>Can anyone out there tell me why Windows uses Ctrl-V as a keyboard
>shortcut for Paste? I've just been asked by one fo the children here, and
>I realised I have no idea!
x=cut
c=copy
v=next key on keyboard
TheCentralSc...@pobox.com
>On Thu, 7 Jan 1999 11:22:43 -0000, He...@there.com (Adrian Thompson)
>wrote:
>
>>Hi.
>>Can anyone out there tell me why Windows uses Ctrl-V as a keyboard
>>shortcut for Paste? I've just been asked by one fo the children here, and
>>I realised I have no idea!
>>
>
>I always use Ctrl Insert (to cut) and Shift Insert (to paste) !
shift/delete =cut
ctrl/insert = copy
Mike Swaim
: Did they? Remember that MS Word was originally written for the Macintosh.
: MS may have gotten these shortcuts from Macs, but they would already have
: been using them anyway for their Mac software.
I'm pretty sure that Word for DOS predated MacWord. I somewhat remember
it being announced in '82 or '83. Dunno when it finally came out.
Excel did start out on the Mac. What did Multiplan start out on? The
Apple ][ or CP/M?
--
Mike Swaim, Avatar of Chaos: Disclaimer:I sometimes lie.
Home: sw...@c-com.net
Alum: sw...@alumni.rice.edu Quote: "Boingie"^4 Y,W&D
John Savard
>Can anyone out there tell me why Windows uses Ctrl-V as a keyboard
>shortcut for Paste? I've just been asked by one fo the children here, and
>I realised I have no idea!
1) X looks like a pair of scissors, so it's a good choice for "Cut".
The word "Copy" starts with a C.
Cut, Copy, and Paste are related functions, and X, C, and V are
found next to one another on a typewriter keyboard.
2) The IBM PC keyboard has an "Insert" key, so there's no need to keep
^V for that function (what it did with the original WordStar).
John Savard
http://www.freenet.edmonton.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html
Kirk Is
see what's in the clipboard.
What did does use, all those ctrl-insert variants? What about for copy?
--
Kirk Israel - kis...@cs.tufts.edu - http://www.alienbill.com
Today is the first day of the rest of your short,brutish existence as a
sentient creature before being snuffed out into utter nothingness for all
eternity.-Matt Groening
Eric Fischer
> : ... because they ripped it off from the Macintosh, which reserves the
> : keys Command-Z, Command-X, Command-C, and Command-V for Undo, Cut, Copy,
> : and Paste respectively.
>
> And anyway, these shortcuts predate the Mac. IIRC they go back at least
> to WordStar, sometime in the late 1970s.
I don't remember seeing these on anything earlier than the Apple Lisa,
though it wouldn't surprise me if they were copied from something else.
It's possible they were inspired by the WordStar block commands -- ^KC
to copy a block and ^KV to move one -- but I imagine this is more
coincidence than ancestry, since the other WordStar commands aren't
anything like the standard Mac command key assignments.
eric
Eric Fischer
> What did does use, all those ctrl-insert variants? What about for copy?
I assume you mean DOS? If so, it doesn't have any notion of a
clipboard, so the keys for copying and pasting can be whatever
any programmer decides is a good key to use.
There is a minimal (and crummy) interface for copying portions
of the previously typed line into the current one, which I think
goes like this:
F1 copy one character from previous line
F2 c copy up to the next instance of the character "c" in the
previous line
F3 copy the entire previous line
F4 c ignore (that is, delete) up through the next instance
of the character "c" in the previous line
F5 make the current line into the "previous line" and
start over
It's sort of like the "alter" command from SOS, which Microsoft copied
forward into Extended BASIC and EDIT-80, but with even fewer features
and worse feedback.
eric
J. Benz
Kirk Is wrote:
> Mnemonicaly, I've always seen Ctrl-V as standing for "V"iew, i.e.
> see what's in the clipboard.
>
> What did does use, all those ctrl-insert variants? What about for copy?
What did does use? What does did use?
J. Benz
John Birch wrote:
> I still can't work out why you can't highlight a section of something
> and just press delete and insert to paste but have to use control key
> as well.
> ;-)
Because those keys have another action associated with them. Try them in M$
Wierd sometime. 'Insert' toggles between the behavior where new text pushes
old text to its right as new text is entered, and the behavior where new text
overwrites the old text that is there. 'Delete' works similarly to the
backspace, but as, well, errr... forward space - it deletes the character
under the cursor and 'pulls' the rest of the line to the left.
But from the smiley, I'll bet you already knew that?
John Varela
> Because frequently I want to copy something, delete something else adn then
> paste what I just cut into the space.
>
> It therefore makes sense to seperate the delete and cut functions.
The software I use lets you replace something by highlighting it then pasting,
so the intermediate delete is superfluous.
--
John "but that's not Microsoft software" Varela
(delete . between mind and spring to e-mail me)
J. Benz
TheCentralSc...@pobox.com wrote:
> >On Thu, 7 Jan 1999 11:22:43 -0000, He...@there.com (Adrian Thompson)
> >wrote:
> >I always use Ctrl Insert (to cut) and Shift Insert (to paste) !
>
> shift/delete =cut
> ctrl/insert = copy
Criss cross. You delete my wife, I'll delete yours.
Sorry, just saw that movie. Actually two movies - "Strangers on a train" and
"Throw mama from the train".
Ralph Wade Phillips
TheCentralSc...@pobox.com wrote in message ...
>On Thu, 7 Jan 1999 11:22:43 -0000, Adrian Thompson <He...@there.com> wrote:
>>Hi.
>>Can anyone out there tell me why Windows uses Ctrl-V as a keyboard
>>shortcut for Paste? I've just been asked by one fo the children here, and
>>I realised I have no idea!
>
>x=cut
>c=copy
>v=next key on keyboard
Actually, it comes from Command-X, Command-C, and Command-V on the
Macintosh.
"So, Mr. Science, how were THEY picked?"
From the class I went to pre-1984 (December 1983, AAMOF), it went
like this:
"X looks like a pair of scissors, so we CUT with X. V looks like
the tip of a paste brush from the side, so we PASTE with V. C is stuck in
the middle, and serves as a mnemonic for 'COPY', so we use C for Copy."
Sometime I'll dig out my ancient "Inside Macintosh" where they
discuss this.
RwP
Gene Wirchenko
>Sean Case (g...@zip.com.au) wrote:
>: In article <MPG.10fea95f4...@172.16.1.5>, He...@there.com (Adrian
>: Thompson) wrote:
>
>: > Can anyone out there tell me why Windows uses Ctrl-V as a keyboard
>: > shortcut for Paste? I've just been asked by one fo the children here, and
>: > I realised I have no idea!
>
>: ... because they ripped it off from the Macintosh, which reserves the
>: keys Command-Z, Command-X, Command-C, and Command-V for Undo, Cut, Copy,
>: and Paste respectively.
>
>Did they? Remember that MS Word was originally written for the Macintosh.
>MS may have gotten these shortcuts from Macs, but they would already have
>been using them anyway for their Mac software.
>
>And anyway, these shortcuts predate the Mac. IIRC they go back at least
>to WordStar, sometime in the late 1970s.
Nope. In WordStar, ^Z was scroll up (up I think), ^X was advance
a line, ^C was advance a page, and ^V nothing that I remember.
Sincerely,
Gene Wirchenko
Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation:
I have preferences.
You have biases.
He/She has prejudices.
D. Peschel
Gene Wirchenko <ge...@vip.net> wrote:
> Nope. In WordStar, ^Z was scroll up (up I think), ^X was advance
>a line, ^C was advance a page, and ^V nothing that I remember.
"was"? You should have written "is", since WordStar 3.3 still runs fine on
my Kaypro.
^V toggles insert/overstrike mode.
-- Derek
TheCentralSc...@pobox.com
LOL.
Peter Seebach
>overwrites the old text that is there. 'Delete' works similarly to the
>backspace, but as, well, errr... forward space - it deletes the character
>under the cursor and 'pulls' the rest of the line to the left.
I really like this behavior. I got used to it on the Amiga, where backspace
was backspace and delete was delete.
-s
--
Copyright 1998, All rights reserved. Peter Seebach / se...@plethora.net
C/Unix wizard, Pro-commerce radical, Spam fighter. Boycott Spamazon!
Send me money - get cool programs and hardware! No commuting, please.
Visit my new ISP <URL:http://www.plethora.net/> --- More Net, Less Spam!
Eric Fischer
> I'm pretty sure that Word for DOS predated MacWord. I somewhat remember
> it being announced in '82 or '83. Dunno when it finally came out.
My 1993 copy has a big "10 Years of Word" logo on the side, so I guess
it was 1983. The early MS-DOS versions had a *very* different feel
from the later GUI releases.
> What did Multiplan start out on? The Apple ][ or CP/M?
I hadn't realized there was ever an Apple II version, but the
spreadsheet comparison chart in the June, 1984 Creative Computing shows
versions for Apple, IBM PC, MS-DOS, CP/M, and CP/M-86. The first time
I ever saw was Multiplan it was running on a TI-99/4A at a meeting of
the TI Hoosier Users' Group.
eric
edb_...@my-dejanews.com
(Adrian Thompson) wrote:
> Can anyone out there tell me why Windows uses Ctrl-V as a keyboard
> shortcut for Paste? I've just been asked by one fo the children here, and
> I realised I have no idea!
I tell my pupils that, of course, Ctrl-C is for COPY (although in Norwegian
it's Kopi). That the 'X' in Ctrl-X is like a scissor, and the 'V' in Ctrl-V
is an arrow (pointing down).
That's like the old flow-control commands (XON/XOFF) where:
Ctrl-S was 'Stop' and Ctrl-Q was 'Qontinue' :-)
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
Wouter de Waal
> >And anyway, these shortcuts predate the Mac. IIRC they go back at least
> >to WordStar, sometime in the late 1970s.
>
> Nope. In WordStar, ^Z was scroll up (up I think), ^X was advance
> a line, ^C was advance a page, and ^V nothing that I remember.
Ah yes, but Wordstar used Ctrl-K B to mark the block start, Ctrl-K K for
block end (getit? :-) Ctrl-K C for copy, X for cut, V for paste. So it
goes back at least that far...
Programs using shift-del and shift-ins postdate the IBM PC, obviously. ISTR
that the Borland editor could be configured into both keymappings, as could
some other editors. In the end, the momentum won.
Wouter
Samael
John Varela wrote in message ...
>On Thu, 7 Jan 1999 11:35:22, "Samael" <Sam...@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
>
>> Because frequently I want to copy something, delete something else adn
then
>> paste what I just cut into the space.
>>
>> It therefore makes sense to seperate the delete and cut functions.
>
>The software I use lets you replace something by highlighting it then
pasting,
>so the intermediate delete is superfluous.
Not if I'm doing some idying up at the same time
Cut this, delete that, add a line in here, now paste.
Admittedly, I could cut and paste and then go in and tidy it up, but I'd
like to have the option.
Samael
John Birch
wrote:
>On Thu, 07 Jan 1999 10:42:23 GMT, John Birch <jo...@invision.co.uk> wrote:
>>On Thu, 7 Jan 1999 11:22:43 -0000, He...@there.com (Adrian Thompson)
>>wrote:
>>
>>>Hi.
>>>Can anyone out there tell me why Windows uses Ctrl-V as a keyboard
>>>shortcut for Paste? I've just been asked by one fo the children here, and
>>>I realised I have no idea!
>>>
>>Does it???
>>
>>I always use Ctrl Insert (to cut) and Shift Insert (to paste) !
>
>shift/delete =cut
>ctrl/insert = copy
>
You are of course correct, Ctrl_insert is copy not cut. Oops!
BTW shift delete is a new one to me, I might try reprogramming my wet
ware to include that one ;-)
regards John B.
John Birch
wrote:
>In article <36952AD4...@danet.com>, J. Benz <be...@danet.com> wrote:
>>overwrites the old text that is there. 'Delete' works similarly to the
>>backspace, but as, well, errr... forward space - it deletes the character
>>under the cursor and 'pulls' the rest of the line to the left.
>
>I really like this behavior. I got used to it on the Amiga, where backspace
>was backspace and delete was delete.
>
I personally find it annoying, but that's me. AFAI am concerned, the
keyboard ought to be optimised for those actions most commonly used.
Toggling between insert and overstrike mode does not come high on my
list of priorities! I am happy with the pull left delete tho'. :-)
While we're off topic, any feelings on the way that highlighting stuff
with shift and cursor keys works. I always find that the highlighting
jumps to the wrong point, never seems to end up at the end of the para
or whatever, but always jumps to the start of the next line etc.
regards John B.
John Birch
>
>
>John Birch wrote:
>
>> I still can't work out why you can't highlight a section of something
>> and just press delete and insert to paste but have to use control key
>> as well.
>> ;-)
>
>Because those keys have another action associated with them. Try them in M$
>Wierd sometime. 'Insert' toggles between the behavior where new text pushes
>old text to its right as new text is entered, and the behavior where new text
>overwrites the old text that is there. 'Delete' works similarly to the
>backspace, but as, well, errr... forward space - it deletes the character
>under the cursor and 'pulls' the rest of the line to the left.
>
>But from the smiley, I'll bet you already knew that?
>
Yep, but I still find myself toggling between overstrike and insert
mode by accident!
BTW have you heard them called emoticons? :-)
regards John B.
deke.sp...@generous.net
>In article <MPG.10fea95f4...@172.16.1.5>, He...@there.com (Adrian
>Thompson) wrote:
>
>> Can anyone out there tell me why Windows uses Ctrl-V as a keyboard
>> shortcut for Paste? I've just been asked by one fo the children here, and
>> I realised I have no idea!
>
>... because they ripped it off from the Macintosh, which reserves the
>keys Command-Z, Command-X, Command-C, and Command-V for Undo, Cut, Copy,
>and Paste respectively. Note that these letters occupy the bottom left
>corner of the keyboard, and so these command combinations are fairly
>easy to type with the left hand while holding the mouse with the right.
Gee, that's an interesting spin.
Did WordStar steal it from the Mac, too? Even though WordStar predated the Mac
by a number of years?
How about copy editing notation? It predates computers. It might even predate
linotypes - I'm not sure.
V is used for insert, because it's a wedge shape that points to where you are
wedging the new text in.
deke
------------------------
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If it's not 'just the way you are', it's not love....
Eric Fischer
> Ah yes, but Wordstar used Ctrl-K B to mark the block start, Ctrl-K K for
> block end (getit? :-) Ctrl-K C for copy, X for cut, V for paste. So it
> goes back at least that far...
My WordStar experience is pretty minimal, but the manual I have
says that ^KX is "Save & exit" and ^KV is "Move." Did different
versions of WordStar give different meanings to these sequences?
eric
Adam Blacké
Back in the days of old when most computer users where secretaries. To make
the transition easier from manual proofing i.e. pen and paper, they used the
letter V because it looked like the grammatical notation for insert. Sorry
guys the keyboard layout is coincidental.
Adrian Thompson wrote in message ...
>Hi.
>Can anyone out there tell me why Windows uses Ctrl-V as a keyboard
>shortcut for Paste? I've just been asked by one fo the children here, and
>I realised I have no idea!
>
>Thanks,
>
>
>Adrian Thompson
>Laisterdyke GM Middle School
>IT Technician
>
>http://www.schoolsite.edex.net.uk/365/index.htm
>http://www.athompson.mcmail.com
Kirk Is
: Kirk Is <kis...@allegro.cs.tufts.edu> wrote:
: > What did does use, all those ctrl-insert variants? What about for copy?
: I assume you mean DOS? If so, it doesn't have any notion of a
: clipboard, so the keys for copying and pasting can be whatever
: any programmer decides is a good key to use.
: There is a minimal (and crummy) interface for copying portions
: of the previously typed line into the current one, which I think
: goes like this:
[snip]
: It's sort of like the "alter" command from SOS, which Microsoft copied
: forward into Extended BASIC and EDIT-80, but with even fewer features
: and worse feedback.
Thank heavens for Doskey /insert
--
Kirk Israel - kis...@cs.tufts.edu - http://www.alienbill.com
"Every man should be lucky"
--E.B.White, when asked to account for his literary success
Peter Seebach
>On Fri, 08 Jan 1999 00:16:07 GMT, se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach)
>wrote:
>>In article <36952AD4...@danet.com>, J. Benz <be...@danet.com> wrote:
>>>backspace, but as, well, errr... forward space - it deletes the character
>>>under the cursor and 'pulls' the rest of the line to the left.
>>I really like this behavior. I got used to it on the Amiga, where backspace
>>was backspace and delete was delete.
>I personally find it annoying, but that's me. AFAI am concerned, the
>keyboard ought to be optimised for those actions most commonly used.
>Toggling between insert and overstrike mode does not come high on my
>list of priorities! I am happy with the pull left delete tho'. :-)
Oh, I wasn't talking about the incomprehensible toggle, just the BS and DEL
behavior.
>While we're off topic, any feelings on the way that highlighting stuff
>with shift and cursor keys works. I always find that the highlighting
>jumps to the wrong point, never seems to end up at the end of the para
>or whatever, but always jumps to the start of the next line etc.
It works mostly correctly on the Mac, completely wrong in Windows, and mostly
wrong in Netscape.
When you have a block selected, cursor-right should put the cursor immediately
after, and cursor-left immediately before, the selected area. This is "what
you mean".
Charlie Gibbs
(edb_gene) writes:
>That's like the old flow-control commands (XON/XOFF) where:
>Ctrl-S was 'Stop' and Ctrl-Q was 'Qontinue' :-)
Ouch. That's as bad as the mnemonic I heard for memorizing the
hjkl keys in vi. H and L were easy - H is on the left so it
moves you left, L is on the right so it moves you right.
That leaves J and K - which is which? Well, J stands for
"Jump" (down), and K stands for "Klimb".
--
cgi...@sky.bus.com (Charlie Gibbs)
Remove the first period after the "at" sign to reply.
Dan Strychalski
use Ctrl-V for Paste. It's supposed to be "intuitive," dontcha know.
Wherever the assignment of modifier-Z/X/C/V to Undo/Cut/Copy/Paste
originally came from, it was introduced to the computing public through
the first Macs, in 1984. The Mac used Command-X/C/V for Cut/Copy/Paste
(and maybe Command-Z for Undo) from the beginning. "X out" is another
way of saying "cross out," i.e., remove; C is for Copy; and V (1) points
down and (2) makes for a neat row. Z can be thought of as "zap," which
isn't too far from "reverse the last action." Having the keys all in a
row is an old idea; witness vi.
It had nothing to do with WordStar, Word, or the ASCII assignment of
CAN(cel) to 18h. (For non-computerists, that's 18 hex, i.e., 24 decimal,
meaning Ctrl-X at the keyboard, X being the 24th letter of the alphabet.
Ctrl+letter-key combinations produce ASCII control codes, and those
codes *do* *not* *print*. They are command codes. This is part of the
same standard that makes this text readable on just about every computer
system in the world.)
(By the way, what system uses Ctrl-X to delete a line? I've been at this
stuff since 1982, and I've never seen it.)
One of the design goals of the Mac's creators was to make programs such
as WordStar impossible. They were not about to copy anything from
WordStar. While WordStar lets you do *everything* through the Ctrl key,
the Mac in its first three years had *no* Ctrl key; it had a single
Command key, and that key was in the worst possible place for
comfortable use with all but a few character keys. The OS and the first
model apps simply did not allow keyboard-only operation. At the time,
CP/M was still going strong; lots of new IBM-type and non-IBM-type
machines were coming out; and WordStar held near-absolute sway in the
word processing world. Steve Jobs did not want Mac users learning a
method of operation that would be transferrable to other systems.
(Yo, Ralph -- it was indeed WordStar that jumped from zero to at least
seventy-five percent of the x86 word processing market in the second
half of 1982, creaming some twenty competitors. Sorry I didn't respond
to your question about this earlier; things have been gnarly here.)
Remember that every serious general-purpose system *must* have a Ctrl
key (even the Mac eventually got it), and that before 1986 Ctrl was
almost universally in the home row, immediately to the left of the A
key, the position preferred by most (*most*, I said) people who know a
thing or two about computers and must use the keyboard a great deal.
Since Z, X, and C are all in the bottom row (in QWERTY), Ctrl-Z, Ctrl-X,
and Ctrl-C, when used without a prefix keystroke in WordStar, move the
viewframe or the cursor down (all motion control is on the left hand).
Ctrl-V, being in the relatively awkward area between a touch typist's
hands, is assigned to the little-used insert/overtype toggle (and V can
be taken to represent "oVertype"). In blocK operations (which all have
Ctrl-K as a lead-in, and which include so-called cut-and-paste
functions), there is indeed a superficial similarity to the Mac
conventions: Ctrl-Kc copies, and Ctrl-Kv moVes, a marked block to the
current cursor position. Ctrl-Kx, however, is "save and exit with no
questions asked" (I have no trouble thinking of a file as a block; your
mileage may vary), and Ctrl-Kz at the time was not used.
Microsoft Word for MS/PC DOS did not use Alt-Z/X/C/V for Undo/Cut/Copy/
Paste, and Gates had a standing rule that programs must not use any
main-block Ctrl-key combinations (MS/PC DOS utilities responded to the
few recognized by the CP/M 2.2 command interpreter -- Ctrl-C, Ctrl-H,
Ctrl-I, Ctrl-M, Ctrl-P, and Ctrl-S -- but that was *it* for ten years,
until DR-DOS came along with a WordStar-like editor and WordStar-style
command-line recall and editing). Check out any big-name eighties-era
word processor other than WordStar. *It* *is* *incredible* the hoops
developers jumped through, both at Microsoft and at companies ostensibly
competing with Microsoft, to avoid assigning command functions to Ctrl-A
through Ctrl-Z.
Like Jobs, Gates wanted his customers conditioned to using keystrokes
available only on systems he profited from. Ctrl being common to all
machines, he didn't want people using it. His job was harder than
Jobs's: he didn't have direct, absolute control over hardware and
application design. With the cash and the clout afforded by his control
of the operating system, however, he could reward or punish other
companies according to whether or not they toed the line. And that's
exactly what he did. You can't deny the possibility out of hand. First
check out the command keystrokes of big-name eighties-era word
processors. Thoroughly. Please. The keystrokes tell all.
(This had the added benefit of ensuring that people would detest using
the keyboard and be ripe for Windows. I know a whole lotta people who
love, and I mean l-o-v-e LOVE WordStar, vi, or Emacs keystrokes and can
use them for everything all day every day. When was the last time you
heard anyone rave about WordPerfect, Word for MS/PC DOS, or MultiMate
[or, for that matter, Macintosh, or Windows, or CUA] command keystrokes?
Considering how many more people have used these programs by now, isn't
that just a little bit strange?)
Ctrl-Z/X/C/V for Undo/Cut/Copy/Paste did not exist in the x86 world
until IBM moved Ctrl out of the home row and Microsoft started moving
its Mac applications to Windows. Through version 2.03, the applications
bundled with Windows used Del for Cut, Ins for Paste, and F2 for Copy.
Alt worked as it does today, and Ctrl sat there dead as a doornail.
Check out _Windows_, the "official guide to Microsoft's operating
environment," copyright 1986 by Nancy Andrews (Microsoft Press, ISBN
0-914845-70-5). It wasn't enough to have a (minimally) consistent
interface; just like Jobs's (minimally) consistent interface, it had to
be as inconsistent as possible with any other system folks might come
across.
By the end of the eighties, CP/M was out of contention, almost all
keyboards had Ctrl in the bottom corner, word processors that ignored
Ctrl had pretty much taken over through institutional sales, and Windows
was in shape to be passed off as usable even to halfway knowledgeable
folks. Gates felt he could safely use Ctrl, and Lord knows he needed
something to offset the inefficiency of his mouse-and-proprietary-keys
method of working. To say he stole the Z/X/C/V suite from Apple is
exactly right.
Dan Strychalski dski at cameonet, cameo, com, tw (no _x_)
Thomas Tonino
> Like Jobs, Gates wanted his customers conditioned to using keystrokes
> available only on systems he profited from. Ctrl being common to all
> machines, he didn't want people using it.
[snip]
> (This had the added benefit of ensuring that people would detest using
> the keyboard and be ripe for Windows. I know a whole lotta people who
I think Mr. Gates was not too impressed by GUI's. Development was slow
and halfhearted. Did anyone even see Microsoft's attempt in bringing GUI
style file management to a character based interface? It was sold with
the Zenith Easy-PC, an XT. Think it was bundled with DOS 3.2 or 3.3. The
interface really suck. Select file to copy with mouse, type destination
path from memory.
The editor to build the interface was nice though. Looked a bit like the
GEM resource editor, but carachter based.
> love, and I mean l-o-v-e LOVE WordStar, vi, or Emacs keystrokes and can
> use them for everything all day every day. When was the last time you
> heard anyone rave about WordPerfect, Word for MS/PC DOS, or MultiMate
> [or, for that matter, Macintosh, or Windows, or CUA] command keystrokes?
The Mac's are consistent and quick at least.
> Considering how many more people have used these programs by now, isn't
> that just a little bit strange?)
>
> Ctrl-Z/X/C/V for Undo/Cut/Copy/Paste did not exist in the x86 world
> until IBM moved Ctrl out of the home row and Microsoft started moving
> its Mac applications to Windows. Through version 2.03, the applications
> bundled with Windows used Del for Cut, Ins for Paste, and F2 for Copy.
> Alt worked as it does today, and Ctrl sat there dead as a doornail.
This Alt-your-way-through-the-menus must be the worst UI invention ever
IMO.
Oh boy was I surprised to see a key previously used as modifier-only
suddenly to have a action if pressed on its own.
> To say he stole the Z/X/C/V suite from Apple is
> exactly right.
Probably. Beats Shift-Insert (or Alt - E - P [or whatever language
program you are working in]) any time.
Apple later came with extended keyboards with undo/cut/copy/paste
symbols printed near the F1 through F4 keys.
Thomas
Fluffy
> In article <774jp6$l23$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com> edb_...@my-dejanews.com
> (edb_gene) writes:
>
> >That's like the old flow-control commands (XON/XOFF) where:
> >Ctrl-S was 'Stop' and Ctrl-Q was 'Qontinue' :-)
I used to tell people stop/quit stopping. Then when the IBM PC decided
that ^S would be a toggle, it became stop/stop stopping.
> Ouch. That's as bad as the mnemonic I heard for memorizing the
> hjkl keys in vi. H and L were easy - H is on the left so it
> moves you left, L is on the right so it moves you right.
> That leaves J and K - which is which? Well, J stands for
> "Jump" (down), and K stands for "Klimb".
The J is a fish hook, and K is a kite.
--
"Meow." --me
jmfb...@aol.com
"Charlie Gibbs" <cgi...@sky.bus.com> wrote:
>In article <774jp6$l23$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com> edb_...@my-dejanews.com
>(edb_gene) writes:
>
>>That's like the old flow-control commands (XON/XOFF) where:
>>Ctrl-S was 'Stop' and Ctrl-Q was 'Qontinue' :-)
>
>hjkl keys in vi. H and L were easy - H is on the left so it
>moves you left, L is on the right so it moves you right.
>That leaves J and K - which is which? Well, J stands for
>"Jump" (down), and K stands for "Klimb".
>
And all this time I thought the keys were picked because of their
relative position on the keyboard. For instance, it was so much
easier to test if the <ctrl-Q> was in the same area as the <ctrl-S>.
One didn't have to move many muscles to do either. The keys picked
for the applications where they used me as the data enterer,
were based on ease of data entry. For instance, the programmer
insisted that each entry be terminated with a carriage return,
causing me to "lose" my place on the keyboard. I asked for the
space character to be the equivalent terminating character. It
took a huge fight with the programmer, but I told him that the
rate of data entered would double if he made the change (that
rate of data entered was one of the customer's criteria).
/BAH
Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
Eric Fischer
> Wherever the assignment of modifier-Z/X/C/V to Undo/Cut/Copy/Paste
> originally came from, it was introduced to the computing public through
> the first Macs, in 1984.
Actually, the Command-X/C/V keys were also used a year earlier by the
Lisa software. But Command-Z for Undo seems to have been introduced
with the Mac.
> (By the way, what system uses Ctrl-X to delete a line? I've been at this
> stuff since 1982, and I've never seen it.)
The ones I've seen are the Apple II ROM line editor, the Radofin/Mattel
Aquarius, whatever version of CP/M it is that came with my Kaypro, and
a few ancient versions of Unix.
eric
Gene Wirchenko
>Interesting that knowledgeable folks can't figure out why some programs
>use Ctrl-V for Paste. It's supposed to be "intuitive," dontcha know.
The way I see "intuitive" bandied about these days, I think it
now means
Well, *I* know it. What are you: an idiot or something?
[snip]
Gene Wirchenko
>In article <774jp6$l23$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com> edb_...@my-dejanews.com
>(edb_gene) writes:
>
>>That's like the old flow-control commands (XON/XOFF) where:
>>Ctrl-S was 'Stop' and Ctrl-Q was 'Qontinue' :-)
>
>Ouch. That's as bad as the mnemonic I heard for memorizing the
>hjkl keys in vi. H and L were easy - H is on the left so it
>moves you left, L is on the right so it moves you right.
>That leaves J and K - which is which? Well, J stands for
>"Jump" (down), and K stands for "Klimb".
If ^J and ^K were reversed in function, we could have "J" for
"Jerk (up (as in head))" and "K" for "Kollapse". My mnemonics can
beat up your mnemonics.
Most discussion about mnemonic value doesn't deal with the fact
that what is mnemonic to me may be Greek to you and v.v.. Much of it
is what you get used to. I posted the following in
comp.lang.c.moderated some time ago in response to a complaint about
my then sig. Peter Seebach is the moderator of the group and he may
remember it.
********** Start of Included Message **********
========
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c.moderated
Subject: Re: C pronunciation Guide correction
From: ge...@mindlink.bc.ca (Gene Wirchenko)
Date: 3 Aug 1996 11:43:30 -0500
m...@hubcap.clemson.edu (M. J. Saltzman) wrote:
>ge...@mindlink.bc.ca (Gene Wirchenko) writes:
>>"Michael J. Gelotte" <mgel...@bcc.ctc.edu> wrote:
>>>Gene Wirchenko wrote:
>>>> y=x++; "wye equals ex plus plus semicolon"
>>>> x=x++; "ex equals ex doublecross semicolon"^^^^^ Actually, this pronunciation is INCORRECT. The = operator is
>>>pronounced "is assigned the value of" or "gets". The == operator is the
>>>only one pronounced "equals".
>> Oh please! "=" is called the "equals" sign. Ask practically
>>anyone.
>> I use "equals" for assignment and "is equal to" (or occasionally
>>"equals equals") for "==". YMMV.
>I'm not taking sides here, but I thought I'd relate the following
I'm sorry, but innocent bystanders are strictly forbidden in any
thread. You should know that.
>anecdote (from a footnote in Cornell professors Gries and Schneider's
>_A Logical Approach to Discrete Math_):
> Perhaps because of the use of = for assignment in
> FORTRAN...assignment is often read as "x equals E". This
> causes great confusion. [Gries] learned to distinguish
> between = and := while giving a lecture in Marktoberdorf,
> Germany, in 1975. At one point, he wrote ":=" on the board
> but pronounced it "equals". Immediately, the voice of Edsger
> W. Dijkstra boomed from the back of the room: "becomes!".
"is assigned" or "gets"? Since, no one in his right mind would
use gets() (due to the no bag-limit input), "gets" will work
beautifully.
> After a disconcerted pause, [Gries] said, "Thank you; if I
> make the same mistake again, please let me know.", and went
> on. Once more during the lecture, the mistake was made,
> followed by a booming "becomes" and a "Thank you". [Gries]
> has never made that mistake again! [Schneider], having
> received his undergraduate education at Cornell, has never
> experienced this difficulty.
I've never had the semantic problem that these worthies have had.
>Elsewhere (ObC):
> Equality is one of our most important concepts, and it a
> unique symbol. The use of = for assignment in FORTRAN has
> only caused confusion, as has the use of = for assignment and
> == for equality in C.
I know. We'll explain "=" (assignment) as a bridge (looks like
one) that values travel over and use ":=" for comparison (the ":"
being a gate that stops the value from travelling and gates are used
as in city gates and customs for checking things over (i.e.
comparison). Excellent mnemonic value!
Or we could try explaining "=" (assignment) as a bridge (looks
like one) that values travel over and use "|" for equality (looking in
a mirror). Needing a new symbol for "or", we'll grab "%". There's a
slash in there which is used for alternatives in English and the two
circles have mnemonic value: reminding you that "%" (or) is dyadic.
To handle modulo division, we use "^" (it looks like it splits things
and we are splitting away the modulo value). Now needing a symbol for
exclusive or, we take "'". (The "'" looks like a one and one true
means true result on exclusive or.) For character delimiting, we take
">" and "<" as in >a< (the SINGLE points point to the ONE character.
To avoid confusion, we also use <string> to represent strings (as the
TWO points point to the usually MULTIPLE character string). Now
needing symbols for less than and greater than and having possibly
irritated Messrs. Backus and Naur, we use the double quote for BNF
since we aren't using it now and take >#< and have it return negative,
zero, or positive just like strcmp() and adding some more consistency
to the C language. These changes will add much needed mnemonic value
to C and reduce confusion.
Ah, but you complain that >#< is used by the preprocessor. Well,
this is an excellent time to correct that and design a more powerful
one or leave it out altogether. If the former, the redesigner can
make it easier to use and if the latter, having to remember nothing is
certainly mnemonic.
[I just hope Schildt doesn't read this and incorporate it in a book.
-mod]
>--
> Matthew Saltzman
> Clemson University Math Sciences
> m...@clemson.edu
Symbols are arbitrary and it's what you get used to.
Sincerely,
Gene "Don't mess with my sig or I'll mess with your mind!" Wirchenko
C Pronunciation Guide:
y=x++; "wye equals ex plus plus semicolon"
x=x++; "ex equals ex doublecross semicolon"
********** End of Included Message **********
deke.sp...@generous.net
>Wherever the assignment of modifier-Z/X/C/V to Undo/Cut/Copy/Paste
>originally came from, it was introduced to the computing public through
>the first Macs, in 1984.
Yes.
And MicroPro had a time machine, which is how these commands ended up in CP/M
versions of WordStar 5-7 years before then.
>(By the way, what system uses Ctrl-X to delete a line? I've been at this
>stuff since 1982, and I've never seen it.)
I don't know about "delete line" but Windows uses it for "delete block"
>One of the design goals of the Mac's creators was to make programs such
>as WordStar impossible. They were not about to copy anything from
>WordStar. While WordStar lets you do *everything* through the Ctrl key,
>the Mac in its first three years had *no* Ctrl key; it had a single
>Command key, and that key was in the worst possible place for
>comfortable use with all but a few character keys. The OS and the first
>model apps simply did not allow keyboard-only operation.
Making the Mac highly desirable for folks who had three hands - two for the
keyboard, and one for the mouse.
>(Yo, Ralph -- it was indeed WordStar that jumped from zero to at least
>seventy-five percent of the x86 word processing market in the second
>half of 1982, creaming some twenty competitors. Sorry I didn't respond
>to your question about this earlier; things have been gnarly here.)
You are looking at the wrong frame of reference. The x86 chips are an extension
of the 8080/Z80 chip. WordStar had that share of market in the CP/M world, and
if anything, it *increased* its market share as CP/M-86 and PC-DOS were
introduced. (Was it ever ported to the USCD operating system?)
Kevin Michael Vail
<ral...@techie.com> wrote:
>Hi there!
>
>TheCentralSc...@pobox.com wrote in message ...
>>On Thu, 7 Jan 1999 11:22:43 -0000, Adrian Thompson <He...@there.com> wrote:
>>>Hi.
>>>Can anyone out there tell me why Windows uses Ctrl-V as a keyboard
>>>shortcut for Paste? I've just been asked by one fo the children here, and
>>>I realised I have no idea!
>>
>>x=cut
>>c=copy
>>v=next key on keyboard
>
> Actually, it comes from Command-X, Command-C, and Command-V on the
>Macintosh.
>
> "So, Mr. Science, how were THEY picked?"
>
> From the class I went to pre-1984 (December 1983, AAMOF), it went
>like this:
>
> "X looks like a pair of scissors, so we CUT with X. V looks like
>the tip of a paste brush from the side, so we PASTE with V. C is stuck in
>the middle, and serves as a mnemonic for 'COPY', so we use C for Copy."
>
> Sometime I'll dig out my ancient "Inside Macintosh" where they
>discuss this.
Don't forget cmd-Z for Undo. Basically they took the top of the standard
Edit menu (Undo, Cut. Copy, Paste) and put them on the four keys at the
lower left of the keyboard, closest to the (single?) command key on the
original Macintosh keyboard. Some programs even used command-B to mean
Clear, which was normally the command below Paste.
--
Kevin Michael Vail | I would rather have a mind opened by wonder
ke...@vailstar.com | than one closed by belief. -- Gerry Spence
Dan Strychalski
> Dan Strychalski <ds...@cameonet.cameo.com.twx> wrote:
>
>> Interesting that knowledgeable folks can't figure out why some programs
>> use Ctrl-V for Paste. It's supposed to be "intuitive," dontcha know.
>
> The way I see "intuitive" bandied about these days, I think it
> now means
> Well, *I* know it. What are you: an idiot or something?
I hope it didn't seem as though I was saying something like the last
line above. I meant my remark as a dig at the marketeers who have ruined
that word.
You have it right, Gene. In a perfect world, a lot more people would be
as sensitive as you are to the intentions behind people's words.
(That's "a lot more," not "all." A perfect world would not be a boring
world. ;-)
Dan Strychalski
>> Wherever the assignment of modifier-Z/X/C/V to Undo/Cut/Copy/Paste
>> originally came from, it was introduced to the computing public through
>> the first Macs, in 1984. [That's me; Deke is next -- DS]
. . .
> And MicroPro had a time machine, which is how these commands ended up in
> CP/M versions of WordStar 5-7 years before then.
I'm not sure if that's a toss at me or at someone else, but I'll field
it. In WordStar --
Ctrl-Z scrolls the viewframe down a line. Undo is Ctrl-U.
Ctrl-X moves the cursor down a line. Delete Marked Block is Ctrl-Ky.
Ctrl-C scrolls the viewframe down a frame. Copy Marked Block is Ctrl-Kc.
Ctrl-V is Overtype, i.e., Insert off/on. No clipboard, no "paste."
*Move* Marked Block is Ctrl-Kv.
I believe Apple started with C for "copy" and X for "X out" (or
"scissors") and took it from there. *Perhaps* WordStar's use of Ctrl-Kv
for Move Marked Block emboldened them enough to use Cmd-V for Paste. It
would be an interesting question to ask the folks whose signatures are
inside the early Mac case, molded onto the back cover.
C is a natural for "copy," and the letter is one of the easiest to hit
no matter where your modifier key is, so I doubt that Apple had
WordStar's Ctrl-Kc in mind when making that assignment. They were
enormously creative, ya gotta give 'em that.
Here's my read on the philosophy behind the WordStar assignments:
WordStar at the time did not have Undo as we know it now; Ctrl-U was
really "cancel" (it became Undo [still different from Mac/Windows Undo,
but Undo nevertheless] in version 4.0, in 1986 I think). So for safety's
sake, all deletions were in the awkward area between a touch typist's
hands: T, Y, G, and H. Move Marked Block became Ctrl-Kv instead of
Ctrl-Km because (1) it involved a deletion, and V is awkward with your
pinkie on the home-row Ctrl key (Ctrl-Kv *could* be undone quite easily,
but a newbie might not know how), and (2) the developers avoided using
M, since a follow-up to Ctrl-K (or to any other lead-in) was treated the
same whether it was uppercase, lowercase, or Ctrl'd, so M would be
indistinguishable from Return on the keyboards of the time and using it
could lead to confusion (or unwanted restrictions in future versions).
>> Command key, and that key was in the worst possible place for
>> comfortable use with all but a few character keys. The OS and the first
>> model apps simply did not allow keyboard-only operation.
>
> Making the Mac highly desirable for folks who had three hands - two for the
> keyboard, and one for the mouse.
My main objection is that it was *unnecessary*. A WordStar-like keyset
works *beautifully* with a menu bar and pull-downs. But neither Apple
nor Microsoft will allow it, even as an option. I think this is because
they want people locked into architecture-specific keystrokes, and Ctrl
is universal.
>> (Yo, Ralph -- it was indeed WordStar that jumped from zero to at least
>> seventy-five percent of the x86 word processing market in the second
>> half of 1982, creaming some twenty competitors. Sorry I didn't respond
>> to your question about this earlier; things have been gnarly here.)
>
> You are looking at the wrong frame of reference. The x86 chips are an
> extension of the 8080/Z80 chip. WordStar had that share of market in the
> CP/M world, and if anything, it *increased* its market share as CP/M-86 and
> PC-DOS were introduced. (Was it ever ported to the USCD operating system?)
I don't believe it was. I think you misunderstand what I wrote, and I
indeed should have written "MS/PC DOS" instead of "x86." WordStar must
have had eighty or ninety percent of the 8080/Z80 word processing
market. CP/M folk were loath to switch to IBM micros in the first few
years, so I consider the MS/PC DOS arena a separate market. IBM (and
probably Microsoft) worked with Sorcim and others so that apps would be
available for the 5150 as soon as it appeared. The word processors, of
course, relied heavily on IBM's function, arrow, and editing keys. Along
came WordStar, which laughed at those keys (they worked, but you didn't
need them), and BOOM, zero to seventy-five percent in less than six
months, without bundling or (as far as I know) great hoopla. It took
WPCorp, et al., a *long* time (and *serious* foul-ups on Micropro's
part) to erode that lead. And with all the copying going on in the
industry at the time, not only did no one (no one big, at least) copy
anything from WordStar, they * didn't * even * put * the * main-block *
Ctrl-key * combinations * to * other * uses *. It oughta make ya think.
Dan Strychalski
. . .
> were based on ease of data entry. For instance, the programmer
> insisted that each entry be terminated with a carriage return,
> causing me to "lose" my place on the keyboard. I asked for the
. . .
And people wonder why I will fight to be able to use ^H instead of
Backspace, ^M instead of Return/Enter, and ^[ instead of Esc. . . .
Hannu Rummukainen
Since I haven't seen this mentioned in the thread: My understanding is
that using control-X, control-C and control-V to do cut, copy and paste
was based on an IBM user interface standard called "CUA".
I believe I learned this from some old Amiga documentation; on the Amiga
you use the left Amiga key instead of the control key. Is there any
truth behind my recollections?
Hannu Rummukainen
Dan Strychalski
> Since I haven't seen this mentioned in the thread: My understanding is
> that using control-X, control-C and control-V to do cut, copy and paste
> was based on an IBM user interface standard called "CUA".
Now THERE's a question. Does any version of CUA say anything about any
ASCII Ctrl-key combinations?
Gareth Alun Evans
the compass rose.....
^E North, go up one line
^X South, down one line
^S West, left one char
^D East, right one char.
Then the "power" versions, one key further over...
^A left one word
^F right one word
^R Top of page
^C Bottom of page
Dan Strychalski
> ISTR that Wordstar navigation was based loosely upon
> the compass rose.....
Not bad. Try this:
<finger://ds...@cameonet.cameo.com.tw>
Gene Wirchenko
>Gene Wirchenko (ge...@vip.net) remarked --
>
>> Dan Strychalski <ds...@cameonet.cameo.com.twx> wrote:
>>
>>> Interesting that knowledgeable folks can't figure out why some programs
>>> use Ctrl-V for Paste. It's supposed to be "intuitive," dontcha know.
>>
>> The way I see "intuitive" bandied about these days, I think it
>> now means
>> Well, *I* know it. What are you: an idiot or something?
>
>I hope it didn't seem as though I was saying something like the last
>line above. I meant my remark as a dig at the marketeers who have ruined
>that word.
No, I caught your drift and I was digging the hole.
>You have it right, Gene. In a perfect world, a lot more people would be
>as sensitive as you are to the intentions behind people's words.
It's not necessarily the intention. Often, it's the effective
use. Nice fireworks when one points this out.
>(That's "a lot more," not "all." A perfect world would not be a boring
>world. ;-)
True. It's not as if shovelling B.S. is fun and we should do it
forever.
Gene Wirchenko
[snip]
>Here's my read on the philosophy behind the WordStar assignments:
>WordStar at the time did not have Undo as we know it now; Ctrl-U was
>really "cancel" (it became Undo [still different from Mac/Windows Undo,
>but Undo nevertheless] in version 4.0, in 1986 I think). So for safety's
>sake, all deletions were in the awkward area between a touch typist's
>hands: T, Y, G, and H. Move Marked Block became Ctrl-Kv instead of
>Ctrl-Km because (1) it involved a deletion, and V is awkward with your
>pinkie on the home-row Ctrl key (Ctrl-Kv *could* be undone quite easily,
>but a newbie might not know how), and (2) the developers avoided using
But ^KV *was* move in 8-bit WordStar. Icertainly used it often
enough.
[snip]
Eric Fischer
> Since I haven't seen this mentioned in the thread: My understanding is
> that using control-X, control-C and control-V to do cut, copy and paste
> was based on an IBM user interface standard called "CUA".
Hmmm.... according to a web page at
http://webopedia.internet.com/TERM/C/CUA.html
the CUA user interface standards didn't appear until 1987, which
would make them too late to have any influence on the Macintosh.
That date may not be accurate, though.
Another possibility, which I don't think anyone has mentioned yet, is
that these key assignments were influenced by the UCSD P-system, which
was used for the initial Lisa development and which definitely affected
other aspects of the design. The P-system editor doesn't use the V key
for anything, but it does use X and C for eXchange and Copy. There's
also a Zap command, but it's been ten years since I wrote anything in
UCSD Pascal so I can't remember whether Zap has anything to do with
undoing changes.
eric
Dan Strychalski
> But ^KV *was* move in 8-bit WordStar. Icertainly used it often
> enough.
I was trying to explain, in my own fumbling way, why ^Kv was chosen
instead of ^Km.
I used ^Kv two seconds ago. I use it every day. I *don't* think Apple
got the idea for Cmd-V from it.
lis...@zetnet.co.uk
On 1999-01-09 deke.sp...@generous.net said:
:>One of the design goals of the Mac's creators was to make programs
:>such as WordStar impossible. They were not about to copy anything
:>from WordStar. While WordStar lets you do *everything* through the
:>Ctrl key, the Mac in its first three years had *no* Ctrl key; it
:>had a single Command key, and that key was in the worst possible
:>place for comfortable use with all but a few character keys. The
:>OS and the first model apps simply did not allow keyboard-only
:>operation.
:Making the Mac highly desirable for folks who had three hands - two
:for the keyboard, and one for the mouse.
Or for the real cleverdicks of this world.
--
Communa (lis...@zetnet.co.uk) -- you know soft spoken changes nothing
lis...@zetnet.co.uk
On 1999-01-09 ds...@cameonet.cameo.com.twx said:
:Like Jobs, Gates wanted his customers conditioned to using
:keystrokes available only on systems he profited from. Ctrl being
:common to all machines, he didn't want people using it. His job was
:harder than Jobs's: he didn't have direct, absolute control over
:hardware and application design. With the cash and the clout
:afforded by his control of the operating system, however, he could
:reward or punish other companies according to whether or not they
:toed the line. And that's exactly what he did. You can't deny the
:possibility out of hand. First check out the command keystrokes of
:big-name eighties-era word processors. Thoroughly. Please. The
:keystrokes tell all.
Except for the crucial fact that MS-DOS was a multi-platform OS until well
after (at least) Word for DOS and WordPerfect had arrived. If it was profit
motive, sticking with the lowest common denominator would have remained
important. I think they just thought that it really was easier for people
to associate (say) F4 with save, rather than (say) ^KD. (Etc.) They forgot
that it's a lot easier to learn some interesting keystrokes than it is for
an experienced typist to break off from typing every so often to (eg) move
up a paragraph.
(Oh, here's an example of fun. I use vi extensively at work, but my Alpha
workstation has no ESC key...)
Dan Strychalski
> On 1999-01-09 deke.sp...@generous.net said:
> :> One of the design goals of the Mac's creators was to make programs
> :> such as WordStar impossible. They were not about to copy anything
> :> from WordStar. While WordStar lets you do *everything* through the
> :> Ctrl key, the Mac in its first three years had *no* Ctrl key; it
> :> had a single Command key, and that key was in the worst possible
> :> place for comfortable use with all but a few character keys. The
> :> OS and the first model apps simply did not allow keyboard-only
> :> operation. [actually the above is mine, not Deke's -- dski]
>
> : Making the Mac highly desirable for folks who had three hands - two
> : for the keyboard, and one for the mouse.
>
> Or for the real cleverdicks of this world.
Or perhaps... *PROVEN* Apple uses alien technology...?
k...@ichtys.n-online.de
: Adrian Thompson (He...@there.com) wrote:
: : Hi.
: : Can anyone out there tell me why Windows uses Ctrl-V as a keyboard
: : shortcut for Paste? I've just been asked by one fo the children here, and
: : I realised I have no idea!
: I suppose, but don't treat as gospel, that since cut is ctrl-x - analogous
: to the 'del char' in vi and the shape of 'x' looks like crossing something
: out and copy is ctrl-c - well, the first letter of copy is 'c', the next
: key combination is, well, ctrl-v. Makes a happy little block of keys.
Take a look at a NeXT keyboard, and you get obvious confirmation.
Howard S Shubs
k...@ichtys.n-online.de () wrote:
>C Lamb (cs...@stoat.shef.ac.uk) wrote:
>: I suppose, but don't treat as gospel, that since cut is ctrl-x - analogous
>: to the 'del char' in vi and the shape of 'x' looks like crossing something
>: out and copy is ctrl-c - well, the first letter of copy is 'c', the next
>: key combination is, well, ctrl-v. Makes a happy little block of keys.
>
>Take a look at a NeXT keyboard, and you get obvious confirmation.
I suspect it might have to do with the fact that before there was Windows,
and before there was NeXT, there was Macintosh. And that's how it's done
on the Mac. I don't know why the Mac does it that way.
--
Howard S Shubs The Denim Adept
Martin Ibert
>The most obvious reason is that Ctrl Z, X, C, V are most convenient for some
>of the most common operations: Undo, Cut, Copy and Paste. Simply because
>they are close to the control key on most keyboards.
But the Z key is up between the T and U keys, way off the X-C-V row!
What you mean is the Y key!
(*argh* stop hitting me, please ...)
--
>> Please visit http://www.ibert.com/ for contact information. <<
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Blind faith in your leaders, or in anything, will get you killed!
Charles Richmond
the use of the command key instead of the control key, the cut, paste, et. al.
is the same.
--
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
| Charles and Francis Richmond <rich...@plano.net> |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
Andrew Cadley
Martin Ibert wrote in message <36a25cf6...@news.home.ibert.com>...
:On Thu, 7 Jan 1999 03:28:32 -0700, "Scott" <no...@nospam.com> wrote:
:
:>The most obvious reason is that Ctrl Z, X, C, V are most convenient
for some
:>of the most common operations: Undo, Cut, Copy and Paste. Simply
because
:>they are close to the control key on most keyboards.
:
:But the Z key is up between the T and U keys, way off the X-C-V row!
:What you mean is the Y key!
No, no, no. Z goes between A and E, surely?
You're thinking of the W key. :)
AndyC
Rick Lugg
--
Rick Lugg
Andrew Cadley wrote in message <780oqr$a...@cpca3.uea.ac.uk>...
D. Peschel
Rick Lugg <rick...@intekom.co.za.hmmm> wrote:
>OK who's the joker with the Dvorak keyboard!
>Andrew Cadley wrote in message <780oqr$a...@cpca3.uea.ac.uk>...
>>Martin Ibert wrote in message <36a25cf6...@news.home.ibert.com>...
>>:But the Z key is up between the T and U keys, way off the X-C-V row!
>>:What you mean is the Y key!
>>No, no, no. Z goes between A and E, surely?
>>
>>You're thinking of the W key. :)
Actually, Martin was thinking of the German QWERTZ keyboard -- Y and Z are
switched compared to their positions on the American keyboard. There are
probably other changes.
And Andrew was thinking of the French (Belgian? Swiss?) AZERTY keyboard.
-- Derek
John Riddoch
>
> On Thu, 7 Jan 1999 03:28:32 -0700, "Scott" <no...@nospam.com> wrote:
>
> >The most obvious reason is that Ctrl Z, X, C, V are most convenient for some
> >of the most common operations: Undo, Cut, Copy and Paste. Simply because
> >they are close to the control key on most keyboards.
>
> What you mean is the Y key!
ZXCV are next to one another on _most_ keyboards; generally US/UK ones
(dunno the layouts of other locale keyboards). In this sense, BillG was
playing to the largest market (US+UK probably use > 50% of the world's
computers).
--
John Riddoch Email: j...@scms.rgu.ac.uk Telephone: (01224)262730
Room C4, School of Computer and Mathematical Science
Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, AB25 1HG
"Yoda of Borg are we: Futile is resistance. Assimilate you, we will"
Dan Strychalski
> ZXCV are next to one another on _most_ keyboards; generally US/UK ones
> (dunno the layouts of other locale keyboards). In this sense, BillG was
> playing to the largest market (US+UK probably use > 50% of the world's
> computers).
Repeat after me: It started on the Mac. It started on the Mac. It started
on the Mac....
In Windows 1.02 and 2.03, BillG tied up Alt for menu and command names
and treated Ctrl as though it carried some deadly contagion (which it
does, I suppose, from a would-be monopolist's point of view). His
"shortcuts" (*ptooey!*) for Cut, Copy, and Paste were Del, F2, and Ins.
The ZXCV suite * came * from * the * Mac * (with Cmd as the modifier, of
course; we don't need no steenking standards-based command keystokes...).
Regarding keyboard layouts used for different languages, here are some:
Belgian and French A Z E R T Y U I O P
Q S D F G H J K L M
W X C V B N
German and Swiss Q W E R T Z U I O P
A S D F G H J K L
Y X C V B N M
Danish, Dutch, Italian, Q W E R T Y U I O P
Norwegian, Portuguese, A S D F G H J K L
Spanish, Swedish, UK, USA Z X C V B N M
And don't forget Dvorak P Y F G C R L
(U.S. Dvorak, I'd guess) A O E U I D H T N S
Q J K X B M W V Z
J. Benz
Dan Strychalski wrote:
>
>
> German and Swiss Q W E R T Z U I O P
> A S D F G H J K L
> Y X C V B N M
>
Ah yes. On a recent trip to Germany, I was faced with the deceptively
daunting task of writing program documentation in MSWord, using a German
keyboard with the keycaps laid out as above. But since I was working in
English, and didn't know what all the German menu prompts meant, I had to set
Windows up as American/English. So now, although I could type normally, as
long as I didn't look at the keyboard, whenever I did look, I couldn't even
type my own name! And then, when I put the documents on floppy and flew home,
and loaded them up in Word on my own PC, all kinds of wierdness happened,
since the MSWord in Germany was set up for the European paper sizes -
something like 9x11.5 in inches - and all my documents had to be reworked,
since they contained a lot of tables and illustrations...formatted to the
wrong size page.
Peter Seebach
Dan Strychalski <ds...@cameonet.cameo.com.twx> wrote:
>German and Swiss Q W E R T Z U I O P
> A S D F G H J K L
> Y X C V B N M
>And don't forget Dvorak P Y F G C R L
>(U.S. Dvorak, I'd guess) A O E U I D H T N S
> Q J K X B M W V Z
Hmm. Is German Dvorak
> P Z F G C R L
> A O E U I D H T N S
> Q J K X B M W V Y
then?
-s
--
Peter Seebach - se...@solon.com - Copyright 1996 Peter Seebach.
C/Unix wizard -- C/Unix questions? Send mail for help. No, really!
Unsolicited email is not welcome, and will be billed for at consulting rates.
The *other* C FAQ - http://www.solon.com/~seebs/c/c-iaq.html
Richard E. Hawkins Esq.
Wouter de Waal <bofh...@ccii.co.za> wrote:
>Ah yes, but Wordstar used Ctrl-K B to mark the block start, Ctrl-K K for
>block end (getit? :-) Ctrl-K C for copy, X for cut, V for paste. So it
This makes me feel a *little* better about remembering that paste . . .
rick, who's finally broken himself of the wordstar sequences (he thinks)
--
These opinions will not be those of ISU until it pays my retainer.
Richard E. Hawkins Esq.
Dan Strychalski <ds...@cameonet.cameo.com.twx> wrote:
>Remember that every serious general-purpose system *must* have a Ctrl
>key (even the Mac eventually got it), and that before 1986 Ctrl was
>almost universally in the home row, immediately to the left of the A
>key, the position preferred by most (*most*, I said) people who know a
>thing or two about computers and must use the keyboard a great deal.
yes, exactly where God intended it to be.
>Since Z, X, and C are all in the bottom row (in QWERTY), Ctrl-Z, Ctrl-X,
>and Ctrl-C, when used without a prefix keystroke in WordStar, move the
>viewframe or the cursor down (all motion control is on the left hand).
>Ctrl-V, being in the relatively awkward area between a touch typist's
>hands, is assigned to the little-used insert/overtype toggle (and V can
>be taken to represent "oVertype"). In blocK operations (which all have
>Ctrl-K as a lead-in, and which include so-called cut-and-paste
>functions), there is indeed a superficial similarity to the Mac
>conventions: Ctrl-Kc copies, and Ctrl-Kv moVes, a marked block to the
>current cursor position. Ctrl-Kx, however, is "save and exit with no
>questions asked"
As I recall, there was no "clipboard" type operation; the text had to
remain existing int the document until moved or copied.
>(This had the added benefit of ensuring that people would detest using
>the keyboard and be ripe for Windows. I know a whole lotta people who
>love, and I mean l-o-v-e LOVE WordStar, vi, or Emacs keystrokes and can
>use them for everything all day every day. When was the last time you
>heard anyone rave about WordPerfect, Word for MS/PC DOS, or MultiMate
>[or, for that matter, Macintosh, or Windows, or CUA] command keystrokes?
>Considering how many more people have used these programs by now, isn't
>that just a little bit strange?)
And with those evil keyboads with the control-key-in-exile, several
days of heavy emacs work sent me to a physician to check out the strain.
But now I have three genuine AT keyboards. One has a sticky R,
another a sticky tab, and the third i haven't tried (it's filthy, but
at $1/pop . . .). So I have to drop them on the desk twice a day;
they have a good, stiff, response :)
>By the end of the eighties, CP/M was out of contention,
Wait a minute, wasn't this DR-DOS's heyday? I recall it peaking at
about 10% market share, right until those mysterious windows crashes
& funny "every unit you ship, regardless of using msdos" licensing
terms.
For those that don't recall, CP/M became CP/M-86 which spun off
Concurrent CP/M which i observed multitasking in 1984 on an 8086,
which became Concurrent Dos, or CDOS. I forget whether CP/M-86
or CDOS became DR-DOS, which became Novel Dos, which became Caldera
Dos, which became DR-DOS, which premptively multitasks, unlike a
certain popular system. If they weren't descended from CDOS, I
don't know when they started multitasking, and I also don't know
when it became concurrent. But I do know that in 1984 I had an
8mhz 8086 with 640K and no hard disk running word star, pip, and
something else simultaneously.
Richard E. Hawkins Esq.
>Except for the crucial fact that MS-DOS was a multi-platform OS until well
>after (at least) Word for DOS and WordPerfect had arrived. If it was profit
>motive, sticking with the lowest common denominator would have remained
>important. I think they just thought that it really was easier for people
>to associate (say) F4 with save, rather than (say) ^KD. (Etc.) They forgot
>that it's a lot easier to learn some interesting keystrokes than it is for
>an experienced typist to break off from typing every so often to (eg) move
>up a paragraph.
I never understood the idea that control-F4 was somehow more intuitive
than ^K, as with all other file commands, and S, for save. After using
WS for a short period, the layout made a lot of sense, and I could
figure out what commands that I'd never used, but thought should exist,
were assigned to.
But I could do that with Word through version 3 or maybe 4.
>(Oh, here's an example of fun. I use vi extensively at work, but my Alpha
>workstation has no ESC key...)
But it used to. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was walking down the
hall and saw a piece of plastic on the floor. It was an escape key that
had taken it's label far too literally . . .
Paul Guertin
> Regarding keyboard layouts used for different languages, here are some:
>
> Belgian and French A Z E R T Y U I O P
> Q S D F G H J K L M
> W X C V B N
>
> German and Swiss Q W E R T Z U I O P
> A S D F G H J K L
> Y X C V B N M
>
> Danish, Dutch, Italian, Q W E R T Y U I O P
> Norwegian, Portuguese, A S D F G H J K L
> Spanish, Swedish, UK, USA Z X C V B N M
Anyone knows what's the story behind those three variations?
Here's the japanese kana keyboard. Nowadays, though, most people
use the American QWERTY keyboard and type in romaji (e.g., "n"
and then "u" to get the "nu" character).
nu fu a u e o ya yu yo wa ho he -
ta te i su ka n na ni ra se " .
ti to si ha ki ku ma no ri re ke mu
tu sa so hi ko mi mo ne ru me ro
" is tenten, . is maru, - is katakana long vowel;
shifted a, i, u, e, o, ya, yu, yo, tu are small versions;
shifted wa is wo.
Paul Guertin
p...@sff.et
Dan Strychalski
> Here's the japanese kana keyboard. Nowadays, though, most people
Thank you! It has been added to the collection.
Been meaning to do this for a long time.... Below is how the Bopomofo
syllabary, a.k.a. Zhuyin Fuhao or National Phonetic Alphabet, is laid
out. I've used Yale romanization rather than the now-ubiquitous Pinyin
because it's the same in many cases, I know it better, and it gives a
better approximation of the sounds for non-Sinophone English speakers.
The numbers are tones (3 and 4 are on the 3 and 4 keys; first tone is
the space bar). Power typists mostly use stroke-based systems; this is
for folks like me who only occasionally type Chinese:
b(o) d(e) 3 4 j(r) 2 . a ai an er
p(o) t(e) g(e) j(i/y) ch(r) dz (y)i (w)o ei en
m(o) n(e) k(e) ch(i/y) sh(r) ts (w)u e au ang
f(o) l(e) h(e) sy(i) r sz (y)u (y)e ou eng
Y'know, we did Chinese with an expansion card on the Apple II -- and I
really should make sure my MacChina disks still work on my Mac 512Ke....
Paul Guertin
> Paul Guertin (p...@sff.et -- et?!?) posted:
It's the TLD for flying saucers and other extra-terrestrial craft.
I've been abducted. Either that, or I made a typo in my signature.
Oops.
> Y'know, we did Chinese with an expansion card on the Apple II
That's interesting. I didn't know such a thing existed. What was
the card connected to? Did it use the standard hi-res mode?
Paul Guertin
p...@sff.net
^
Dan Strychalski
> Dan Strychalski <ds...@cameonet.cameo.com.twx> wrote:
>
>> Paul Guertin (p...@sff.et -- et?!?) posted:
>
> It's the TLD for flying saucers and other extra-terrestrial craft.
> I've been abducted. Either that, or I made a typo in my signature.
:-). No prob. I thought it might be an anti-spam mechanism.
>> Y'know, we did Chinese with an expansion card on the Apple II
>
> That's interesting. I didn't know such a thing existed. What was
> the card connected to? Did it use the standard hi-res mode?
It went in one of the expansion slots. I'm pretty sure it used the
standard hi-res mode and didn't require any special connections. It may
have been available only in Taiwan. I got one for a friend and used it
only briefly.
Dan Strychalski
this thread.
Richard E. Hawkins Esq. (ha...@eyry.econ.iastate.edu) quoted Communa
(lis...@zetnet.co.uk) as writing --
>> Except for the crucial fact that MS-DOS was a multi-platform OS until well
>> after (at least) Word for DOS and WordPerfect had arrived. If it was profit
If you're talking about 100%-IBM-compatible x86-based machines and
not-quite-100%-IBM-compatible x86-based machines, I think the trend to
100%-IBM-compatibles was firmly established early in the game.
>> motive, sticking with the lowest common denominator would have remained
>> important. I think they just thought that it really was easier for people
>> to associate (say) F4 with save, rather than (say) ^KD. (Etc.)
Communa!!! Are you baiting me? You have *got* to be kidding. They
thought F4 with *no* on-screen indication was easier to associate with
Save than "_^K_ block & save" staring you in the face and followed,
after you hit ^K, by "_D_ save document"? Not likely!
>> They forgot that it's a lot easier to learn some interesting keystrokes
>> than it is for an experienced typist to break off from typing every so
>> often to (eg) move up a paragraph.
I strongly doubt it.
Richard E. Hawkins responded --
> I never understood the idea that control-F4 was somehow more intuitive
> than ^K, as with all other file commands, and S, for save.
It wasn't supposed to be more "intuitive." Its purpose was to give the
impression that keyboard-based operation is never "intuitive," never
comfortable, and (unless you use Alt, at that time in the corner below
left Shift on all XTs and ATs) never mnemonic. Remember: *all* the
alphabetic Ctrl-key combinations were *dead* in *all* the applications
bundled with Windows up to and including version 2.03. Half of those
keystrokes had no function, and of the other half only three or four
(depending on the release) were documented, in WordPerfect 5.1 for MS/PC
DOS. Half had no function in DisplayWrite 4. All of them were assigned
*printing characters* in MultiMate Advantage II and the cc:Mail editor.
A while back I asked people to check out how the ASCII Ctrl keystrokes
were used in eighties-era mass-market word processors. Do I have to do
everything myself around here? ;-)
> After using WS for a short period, the layout made a lot of sense, and I
> could figure out what commands that I'd never used, but thought should
> exist, were assigned to.
>
> But I could do that with Word through version 3 or maybe 4.
If the tutorial at <http://www.cse.bris.ac.uk/help/docs/word5-i1.htm> is
anything to go by, MS/PC DOS Word 5 is like vi on steroids. Questions of
"intuitiveness" aside, that tutorial makes no mention of Ctrl except in
the sentence "The cursor is moved using the arrow keys, and the Home,
End, PageDown, PageUp and Ctrl keys." Say no more. There is certainly
justification for the way vi works; there is no justification for
leaving thirty-two command keystrokes dead on an integrated console, or
for forcing word-processing professionals' hands out of typing position.
(Speaking of "intuitiveness," check out what Jef Raskin, the original
Mr. GUI at Apple Computer Company, says about current use of the word
"intuitive": <http://www.asktog.com/papers/raskinintuit.html>.)
>> (Oh, here's an example of fun. I use vi extensively at work, but my Alpha
>> workstation has no ESC key...)
You don't seem put out -- unlike SOME people we know. [Hmmm..... Why is
everyone looking at me?]
Eric Fischer
> A while back I asked people to check out how the ASCII Ctrl keystrokes
> were used in eighties-era mass-market word processors. Do I have to do
> everything myself around here? ;-)
OK, OK, I'll contribute one:
AppleWorks, for the Apple II series, uses a meta key (Open Apple) for
most of its functions, but also uses the following Control characters:
^B begin/end boldface
^L begin/end underline
^Y delete to end of line
and special keys that correspond to Control characters:
^H (left arrow) previous character
^U (right arrow) next character
^K (up arrow) previous line
^J (down arrow) next line
^I (tab) next tab stop
^M (return) new paragraph
I want to say that AppleWorks 3.0 added a few more commands attached
to control characters, but I don't have a copy here so I can't check.
eric
lis...@zetnet.co.uk
On 1999-01-25 ds...@cameonet.cameo.com.twx said:
:If you're talking about 100%-IBM-compatible x86-based machines and
:not-quite-100%-IBM-compatible x86-based machines, I think the trend
:to 100%-IBM-compatibles was firmly established early in the game.
Not that early. The Apricot non-IBM-compatible range was a competitor well
into the 286 era (in the UK, anyway). Even ran Windows (ahem)...
:>> motive, sticking with the lowest common denominator would have
:>>remained important. I think they just thought that it really was
:>>easier for people to associate (say) F4 with save, rather than
:(say) ^KD. (Etc.)
:Communa!!! Are you baiting me? You have *got* to be kidding. They
:thought F4 with *no* on-screen indication was easier to associate
:with Save than "_^K_ block & save" staring you in the face and
:followed, after you hit ^K, by "_D_ save document"? Not likely!
When you don't know any keystrokes, you don't know any keystrokes. When
you're a boss, you probably can't even type, so they can fob a nasty
little function key template off on you and call it "intiutive". You don't
know different until you're stuck at 17wpm for the next 10 years, because
reaching over to the function keys prevents you from going any faster.
:>> They forgot that it's a lot easier to learn some interesting
:>>keystrokes than it is for an experienced typist to break off
:>>from typing every so often to (eg) move up a paragraph.
:I strongly doubt it.
Faced with two competing explanations of a set of strange phenomena, I
would always favour the cock-up over the conspiracy.
:It wasn't supposed to be more "intuitive." Its purpose was to give
:the impression that keyboard-based operation is never "intuitive,"
:never comfortable, and (unless you use Alt, at that time in the
:corner below left Shift on all XTs and ATs) never mnemonic.
Why do that, though? Mice hadn't really been thought of by then, and most
PCs of the era didn't even have graphics cards (or they had a Hercules,
which was supported by all of 1-2-3 programs, perhaps?)
:A while back I asked people to check out how the ASCII Ctrl
:keystrokes were used in eighties-era mass-market word processors.
:Do I have to do everything myself around here? ;-)
Hey, if you've got the programs... ;>
:If the tutorial at <http://www.cse.bris.ac.uk/help/docs/word5-i1.
:htm> is anything to go by, MS/PC DOS Word 5 is like vi on steroids.
Ain't nothing wrong with vi. All 26 alphabetic control keys are either
taken or available, and so are most of the lower and upper case ones too.
Not to mention most of the punctuation... ;>
:(Speaking of "intuitiveness," check out what Jef Raskin, the
:original Mr. GUI at Apple Computer Company, says about current use
:of the word "intuitive": <http://www.asktog.com/papers/raskinintuit.
:html>.)
He's doing some interesting stuff these days. Didn't he also publish a
paper where he discussed the flaws of contemporary GUIs? Is it the same
one..?
:>> (Oh, here's an example of fun. I use vi extensively at work, but
:>>my Alpha workstation has no ESC key...)
:You don't seem put out -- unlike SOME people we know.
I am a tad pissed off, because it says ESC on the keyboard and it's in the
right place for an ESC key, and I do look att he keyboard quite a lot when
I type. But I'm getting used to it. It's just that amongst other
stupidities, control is in the right place, but caps lock is there too!
Control is to the left of caps lock, and only one key wide. I don't miss it
all that often, but that's a miracle. Also, even with control there, and
even without caps lock, it still makes escape a two handed operation, which
is far more than it ever was before.
--
Communa (lis...@zetnet.co.uk) -- you know soft spoken changes nothing
Net-Tamer V 1.08X - Test Drive
Dan Strychalski
> Not that early. The Apricot non-IBM-compatible range was a competitor well
> into the 286 era (in the UK, anyway). Even ran Windows (ahem)...
OK; I wasn't aware of that. I still think "multi-platform" conjures up a
picture very different from the reality as far as MS/PC DOS is
concerned.
> When you don't know any keystrokes, you don't know any keystrokes. When
> you're a boss, you probably can't even type, so they can fob a nasty
> little function key template off on you and call it "intiutive". You don't
> know different until you're stuck at 17wpm for the next 10 years, because
> reaching over to the function keys prevents you from going any faster.
Agreed that you can fob anything off on novices. I was talking about the
people running the companies putting out the word processors. The ones
that I know about were all experienced computer specialists.
> Faced with two competing explanations of a set of strange phenomena, I
> would always favour the cock-up over the conspiracy.
The word "conspiracy" is a flag that says to me I have little chance of
getting through to you. So be it. For the record, I see no conspiracy. I
see monopoly power, and I see abuse of it, from 1981 on.
Maybe you had to be there, live through it.
I first saw it on the 128K Mac. Command in the bottom row, no Ctrl key,
no way to work using only the keyboard.... Yes, I considered it
stupidity, monumental stupidity. And a pity.
Then I came into contact with MS/PC DOS. Printable characters in the
control range, not-quite-ASCII character charts labeled only in decimal
(or in a weird mixture of hex and decimal), utilities that understood
not one keystroke not understood by the CP/M command interpreter, and a
ludicrous command-line editing method that depended almost entirely on
function, arrow, and dedicated editing keys. This was hard to put down
to stupidity. I didn't know what to put it down to; in any event it was
clear that the keystrokes that were absent from the Mac were being
avoided in MS/PC DOS. Sure, applications could use them, but I had a
vague sense of unease.
Next was Windows 1.02 or 2.03. I was working for an early maker of
desktop scanners, and they were quick to add a Windows program to the
software they bundled with their products, so I got to run Windows early
in its history. The first thing I did after installing it was to try all
the alphabetic Ctrl-key combinations in all the bundled applications.
Dead. Every one. In every app. In the shell, MS-DOS Executive, I could
change disks with Ctrl-A, Ctrl-B, and Ctrl-C; that was it. Can I be
forgiven for suspecting that something other than stupidity was at work?
Was I justified in thinking that something was not quite right?
Then my XT-class machine died, and I received an AT clone to replace it.
I started typing on the command line and freaked: I had tried to key in
either Ctrl-H or Ctrl-M (Backspace or Return, for the uninitiated), and
instead was thrown into caps lock mode. I had previously adjusted to a
lot of different keyboard layouts: manual, electric, mag-card, and LCD
electronic typewriters, the bit-paired Apple II, a typewriter-paired
serial terminal, and the Selectric-style XT and early AT. I felt I could
deal with anything halfway reasonable. This was not reasonable. Ctrl had
been removed from the touch-typing zone. I was enraged, and I've since
met many others who were enraged.
At least keyboards with Ctrl next to A were still common. I swapped
boards with a co-worker and plowed on. But an explanation was in order.
This redesign obviously hurt touch typists, and ought to make no
difference at all to non-touch-typists. All I could think of was that
someone at IBM must have something against touch typists. Ridiculous, I
know, but it was all I could think of. I was not aware that Gates was
the one who had assigned printing characters to the control range; that
the founders of Lotus and WPCorp were already warning us about Gates's
power; that Gates would benefit most from having one Ctrl key next to
the arrow keys and another positioned for convenient use with the
Z/X/C/V group....
Eventually the head of the company's publishing section decided that the
writers should switch from WordStar to WordPerfect; the file format, he
said, was better suited to his DTP operations. Being a conscientious
technical writer, I opened up the package, took out the manual, and
turned to the sections on keyboard commands and cursor movement. I could
have puked. Ctrl was used with the function, arrow, B, V and 6/^ keys,
and that, to judge from the manual, was it.
I'd better stop before I hit something. Thirteen years ago I was
willing, even eager, to call it a cock-up. How many more instances am I
to regard as cock-ups? Doesn't there come a time to remember one William
of Occam?
> Why do that, though? Mice hadn't really been thought of by then, and most
> PCs of the era didn't even have graphics cards (or they had a Hercules,
> which was supported by all of 1-2-3 programs, perhaps?)
Software developers knew about mice; computer buyers at least knew about
joysticks. (A friend of mine got software that let him use a joystick
with WordStar in Apple II CP/M; he didn't like it). Eight-bit machines
with graphics capabilities were coming out fast and furious; the Lisa
came out with great fanfare in January 1983. At home I have a 1983 Que
book about the IBM Personal Computer that describes GUIs as the coming
thing. That stuff was HOT.
Perhaps you've fallen prey to the line that the microcomputer market was
shambling drowsily along serving mostly hobbyists and academics until
Windows came out. It's a view that is peddled assiduously in many
quarters. I was part of that market from 1982 on, and I don't buy that
line.
Let's look at the situation with regard to graphics cards and such:
Graphics cards: CGA -- announced August 1981, together with the IBM
Personal Computer. Tecmar graphics card (and more than a dozen other
add-ons) -- late 1981 or some time in 1982. Hercules -- August 1982.
Pointing devices: First mouse for IBM-type micros -- 1982. Microsoft's
first mouse -- May 1983. Microsoft Word, with text-only and
all-graphical modes -- November 1983, USD475 with mouse, USD375
without.
GUIs: VisiCorp VisiOn -- announced November 1982, released October 1983.
Microsoft Windows -- announced November 1983. Digital Research GEM --
announced September 1984 (some say it was demoed at Comdex in 1983).
For what it's worth, some sources say Microsoft started working on
Windows, then called Interface Manager, in September 1981. Apple gave
Microsoft a prototype Mac in the summer of 1982 to help with software
design. Multiplan for the Mac was ready to ship with the first machines
in January 1984.
> Hey, if you've got the programs... ;>
Only WordStar (3.3, 4.0, 5.0, 6.0 and 7.0 ;-]) and WordPerfect (5.1 and
5.2CT [Chinese-Traditional]). For the others I'm using the Web, old
manuals that I've found lying around the office (Word, MultiMate,
DisplayWrite), and old references like the above-mentioned Que book.
> :If the tutorial at <http://www.cse.bris.ac.uk/help/docs/word5-i1.
> :htm> is anything to go by, MS/PC DOS Word 5 is like vi on steroids.
>
> Ain't nothing wrong with vi. All 26 alphabetic control keys are either
> taken or available, and so are most of the lower and upper case ones too.
> Not to mention most of the punctuation... ;>
You misunderstand. I may be a WordStar freak, but if I had only vi and
Emacs to choose from (just for editing, mind you), I'd go for vi without
hesitation. Vi works the way it does for good reasons; those reasons do
not apply in the case of a word processor designed for a system with a
tightly integrated keyboard and display. Even many keyboard-happy Unix
types dislike vi's highly modal method of operation. What's such a
method doing in a mass-market word processor?
> :>> (Oh, here's an example of fun. I use vi extensively at work, but
> :>>my Alpha workstation has no ESC key...)
>
> :You don't seem put out -- unlike SOME people we know.
>
> I am a tad pissed off, because it says ESC on the keyboard and it's in the
> right place for an ESC key, and I do look att he keyboard quite a lot when
Huh? Is this like IBM's Delete and [.]/[Del] keys, neither of which
causes the BIOS to generate 7Fh?
(Watch what you say about "the right place for an ESC key." Just a
helpful tip. We probably agree on this issue, but I'll let it lie. I've
got enough problems with Ctrl....)
> I type. But I'm getting used to it. It's just that amongst other
> stupidities, control is in the right place, but caps lock is there too!
> Control is to the left of caps lock, and only one key wide. I don't miss
> it all that often, but that's a miracle. Also, even with control there,
> and even without caps lock, it still makes escape a two handed operation,
> which is far more than it ever was before.
I recently learned that Esc was designated as the lead-in for multi-byte
device controls around the time ASCII was formulated. I wouldn't be
surprised if the creators of ASCII never expected it to be given a key
of its own. When standards for those controls came out, DEC followed
them to a T. This was the mid-to-late seventies; vi existed, IIRC, but
was not yet widely used. Not putting Esc on terminal keyboards at that
time seems faintly justifiable. Choosing Esc as a high-level software
mode switch seems faintly reprehensible. This is a discussion I would
enjoy. ;-]
David Scheidt
: I am a tad pissed off, because it says ESC on the keyboard and it's in the
: right place for an ESC key, and I do look att he keyboard quite a lot when
: I type. But I'm getting used to it. It's just that amongst other
: stupidities, control is in the right place, but caps lock is there too!
: Control is to the left of caps lock, and only one key wide. I don't miss it
: all that often, but that's a miracle. Also, even with control there, and
: even without caps lock, it still makes escape a two handed operation, which
: is far more than it ever was before.
It sounds like you have an lk201 keyboard? I suppose, though if it is attached
to an alpha, that it is one of the later, less suitable for use as a lethal
weapon, or a hammer, versions, like an lk401? One of the function keys should
send an ^[. If I remember right it it is one of the ones in the third
bunch of them, f9 or f10? If you are running X you can modmap the caps locks
key to somewhere useful, like Mir.
With the correct keymap, the lk201 is one of my favorite keyboards. It is
sufficiently heavy that it doesn't move very much if I have it in my lap. It
also has what I think is just a wonderful key feel. The lack of folding leg
thingees is a drawback, as is the odd key layout.
David
: --
: Communa (lis...@zetnet.co.uk) -- you know soft spoken changes nothing
: Net-Tamer V 1.08X - Test Drive
--
David Scheidt <dsch...@enteract.com>
The presumption of the flamers is, I assume, that folks barging in to AFU with
tired old stories and off-topic drivel have already ignored the polite and
subtle clues, and require a thwack with the clue-by-four. -- Andrew Reid
mo_bru...@mogadore.net
> Hi.
> Can anyone out there tell me why Windows uses Ctrl-V as a keyboard
> shortcut for Paste? I've just been asked by one fo the children here, and
> I realised I have no idea!
>
>
>
> Adrian Thompson
> Laisterdyke GM Middle School
> IT Technician
>
> http://www.schoolsite.edex.net.uk/365/index.htm
> http://www.athompson.mcmail.com
CTRL V is abbreviation of Control Vipectus. "Vipectus" is latin for "paste
mo_bru...@mogadore.net
Al Kossow
> On Thursday, January 7, 1999 at 3:00:00 AM UTC-5, Adrian Thompson wrote:
>> Hi.
>> Can anyone out there tell me why Windows uses Ctrl-V as a keyboard
>> shortcut for Paste?
Also, because Apple used <cmd>C and <cmd>V
Ahem A Rivet's Shot
mo_bru...@mogadore.net wrote:
> On Thursday, January 7, 1999 at 3:00:00 AM UTC-5, Adrian Thompson wrote:
> > Hi.
> > Can anyone out there tell me why Windows uses Ctrl-V as a keyboard
> > shortcut for Paste? I've just been asked by one fo the children here,
> > and I realised I have no idea!
> >
layout. X, C and V are adjacent and in easy reach of the left hand with the
little finger on the control key (X is delete, C is copy and V is paste)
while the right hand on the mouse does the selecting and positioning. It's
good ergonimic design - almost as good as the WordStar diamond.
--
Steve O'Hara-Smith | Directable Mirror Arrays
C:>WIN | A better way to focus the sun
The computer obeys and wins. | licences available see
You lose and Bill collects. | http://www.sohara.org/
Chris J Dixon
> Interesting theory - I think the reason has to do with the keyboard
>layout. X, C and V are adjacent and in easy reach of the left hand with the
>little finger on the control key (X is delete, C is copy and V is paste)
Chris
--
Chris J Dixon Nottingham UK
ch...@cdixon.me.uk
Plant amazing Acers.
Peter Flass
--
Pete
Bob Eager
> Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>
>> Interesting theory - I think the reason has to do with the
keyboard
>>layout. X, C and V are adjacent and in easy reach of the left hand with
>>the little finger on the control key (X is delete, C is copy and V is
>>paste)
>
> and "V" can easily be imagined as an insertion symbol.
--
Using UNIX since v6 (1975)...
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org
Scott Lurndal
keyboard at all. Select with the left mouse, extend with the right
mouse button and paste with the center button. Two clicks selects
a word, three clicks a sentence, four-clicks a paragraph, five the
entire window.
cut is handled by either select + backspace or select + ^W depending
on whether it's a gtk/qt or X application.
Quadibloc
> Regarding keyboard layouts used for different languages, here are some:
http://www.quadibloc.com/comp/kyb04.htm
has a few. It doesn't include the most ordinary ones, as you can find them in
sources like the manual for DOS 5, but it includes some rarely-seen ones that
haven't made it to computers yet.
John Savard
Dan Espen
> On Wednesday, January 20, 1999 at 1:00:00 AM UTC-7, Dan Strychalski wrote:
>> Regarding keyboard layouts used for different languages, here are some:
>
> My page at
>
> http://www.quadibloc.com/comp/kyb04.htm
>
> has a few. It doesn't include the most ordinary ones, as you can find them in
> sources like the manual for DOS 5, but it includes some rarely-seen ones that
> haven't made it to computers yet.
1999. Doesn't appear to be on ES.
--
Dan Espen
Quadibloc
> Odd, looks like you read/post on ES but you replied to an article from
> 1999. Doesn't appear to be on ES.
John Savard
Charles Richmond
news:b4b13306-eae4-4de1...@googlegroups.com...
pointing downward (toward the document). Another reason is that it was
desired to use th Z, X, V, and C keys for the undo, cut, paste, and copy
operations... four keys in a row on the QWERTY keyboard.
--
numerist at aquaporin4 dot com
Oregonian Haruspex
Usenet. Most any web forum would be out of business, or the posts from
1999 would have been lost.
Oregonian Haruspex
> On Fri, 23 Jan 2015 06:38:39 -0800 (PST)
> mo_bru...@mogadore.net wrote:
>
>> On Thursday, January 7, 1999 at 3:00:00 AM UTC-5, Adrian Thompson wrote:
>>> Hi.
>>> Can anyone out there tell me why Windows uses Ctrl-V as a keyboard
>>> shortcut for Paste? I've just been asked by one fo the children here,
>>> and I realised I have no idea!
>>>
>> CTRL V is abbreviation of Control Vipectus. "Vipectus" is latin for "paste
>
> Interesting theory - I think the reason has to do with the keyboard
> layout. X, C and V are adjacent and in easy reach of the left hand with the
> little finger on the control key (X is delete, C is copy and V is paste)
> while the right hand on the mouse does the selecting and positioning. It's
> good ergonimic design - almost as good as the WordStar diamond.
out the part you want.
greymausg
'insertion'
--
maus
.
.
...