Public Library. Sign up for WayNet News - our e-newsletter. Call Jane at Waynet, Inc. Please support our members and let them know you located them via WayNet. Tweets by waynetorg. These keyboard shortcuts require you to hold down two keys at one time.
First, select the text or image you wish to cut or copy it will look similar to this: selected text. Press the "Control" key. How do you copy and paste in Word without a mouse? How do I select text without a mouse? How do you select an entire text line? How do you copy and paste for beginners? How do I cut and paste?
What is Ctrl Z? What is Alt F4? What does Ctrl Y mean? What does Ctrl Y do in docs? What is Ctrl V used for? What is Ctrl U used for? What is Ctrl M? This article was originally published with the title "A Meditation on Keyboard Shortcuts" in Scientific American , 6, 26 December Credit: Nick Higgins.
Already a subscriber? Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. See Subscription Options. Go Paperless with Digital. Get smart. Sign up for our email newsletter. Sign Up. 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. Check out any big-name eighties-era word processor other than WordStar.
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.
The keystrokes tell all. This had the added benefit of ensuring that people would detest using the keyboard and be ripe for Windows. Considering how many more people have used these programs by now, isn't that just a little bit strange? Through version 2.
Alt worked as it does today, and Ctrl sat there dead as a doornail. 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.
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. 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? Think it was bundled with DOS 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. Oh boy was I surprised to see a key previously used as modifier-only suddenly to have a action if pressed on its own. And all this time I thought the keys were picked because of their relative position on the keyboard.
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. But Command-Z for Undo seems to have been introduced with the Mac.
It's supposed to be "intuitive," dontcha know. What are you: an idiot or something? 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. Much of it is what you get used to. I posted the following in comp. Peter Seebach is the moderator of the group and he may remember it. You should know that. Dijkstra boomed from the back of the room: "becomes! Since, no one in his right mind would use gets due to the no bag-limit input , "gets" will work beautifully.
I've never had the semantic problem that these worthies have had. I know. Excellent mnemonic value! Now needing a symbol for exclusive or, we take "'". The "'" looks like a one and one true means true result on exclusive or. Now needing symbols for less than and greater than and having possibly irritated Messrs. These changes will add much needed mnemonic value to C and reduce confusion.
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. Sincerely, Gene "Don't mess with my sig or I'll mess with your mind! I don't know about "delete line" but Windows uses it for "delete block". Making the Mac highly desirable for folks who had three hands - two for the keyboard, and one for the mouse.
You are looking at the wrong frame of reference. Was it ever ported to the USCD operating system? 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? Some programs even used command-B to mean Clear, which was normally the command below Paste.
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. 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. No clipboard, no "paste. I believe Apple started with C for "copy" and X for "X out" or "scissors" and took it from there. 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. So for safety's sake, all deletions were in the awkward area between a touch typist's hands: T, Y, G, and H.
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. I don't believe it was. IBM and probably Microsoft worked with Sorcim and others so that apps would be available for the 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. It oughta make ya think. I asked for the. 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. Then the "power" versions, one key further over Not bad. It's not necessarily the intention. Often, it's the effective use. Nice fireworks when one points this out. It's not as if shovelling B. 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.
I use it every day. On deke. Or for the real cleverdicks of this world. On ds 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.
You can't deny the :possibility out of hand. First check out the command keystrokes of :big-name eighties-era word processors. The :keystrokes tell all. If it was profit motive, sticking with the lowest common denominator would have remained important.
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.
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