Re: qwerty layout shortcuts - drifting away from original topic

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

 



I've modified the subject line, a bit.  The original poster still hasn't
found their answer.


On Fri, 2006-12-29 at 07:25 -0500, Matthew Saltzman wrote:
> I think Ed means left-hand CTRL key, right-hand C key.  That's not
> what Tim suggested and it's not what I'd think of for a two-handed
> combination.

Okay, I can see that, now.  It was just the comment about pushing a
finger out of the way that threw me.

Yes, I've done the same thing.  When doing numerous cut and pastes, and
little else, I've just used which ever fingers seemed not busy.  But
it's not practical to do that if you're doing cut and paste while also
typing.  There's too much gross hand movement - you cannot do it fast.

> I can't resist pointing out that the Microsoft "innovation" of putting
> the left control key to the left of the space bar is the devil's
> inspiration. 

Can we really blame the evil empire for the IBM keyboard layout?  I
thought it predated them.  At least dual control keys, one each side,
allows for proper typing, like the two shift keys.  I just wish the ALT
keys had stayed as a way of typing alternate characters, not got
subverted into more hotkeys, and generally abstract ones, as well.

> Long-time Unix hands and early PC users will remember keyboards with
> the CTRL key next to the A, where God intended it to be.

I can't recall one on an IBM PC clone, but certainly on other personal
computers, long before the 286.  While it may help with some things,
there's a few CTRL + <something> combinations which are awkward to do if
you only have one control key on the board.

Coming from a background of typing before there was computers around us,
I found it more than a bit of a pain that there was a CTRL key where I
expected to find a SHIFT lock.  Later on, finding a CAPS lock instead of
shift, was another oddity.  Though probably a more practical offering.
Let's face it, it's common enough to want to type a whole word or two as
all capitals, it's very unusual to need to type several symbols from
above the number row.

One thing I really really hate, is what happens when you press shift
while the caps lock is on.  tYPICALLY YOU GET THIS CRAP (some gumby
thought it'd be a good idea to XOR the shift and caps locks).  Whereas,
if you were a typist, you'd get the first letter still in capitals, as
you expect, then the lock is released when you release the shift key.
Thankfully, in Linux, you can configure away that stupidity.


[Index of Archives]     [Current Fedora Users]     [Fedora Desktop]     [Fedora SELinux]     [Yosemite News]     [Yosemite Photos]     [KDE Users]     [Fedora Tools]     [Fedora Docs]

  Powered by Linux