5 ms·

I find this story odd because IBM was consistent with their keyboard nomenclature across multiple products, and the 3270 series mainframe terminals used the Tab

by ch_123 5mo ago

I find this story odd because IBM was consistent with their keyboard nomenclature across multiple products, and the 3270 series mainframe terminals used the Tab key, located in the same place where you would find a tab key on a modern keyboard, to move the cursor to the next field. https://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/3278/GA27-2890-4_3278_Display_Station_Operators_Guide_Feb84.pdf https://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/3278/GA27-2890-4_3278_Disp... (Page 73 of the PDF) As an aside, it's worth noting that moving between fields was important enough on IBM terminals that they had a dedicated "back tab" key located on the opposite end of the keyboard to the tab key. On the original IBM PC, they decided to combine both functions into a single key. As a result, the tab key on the classic PC keyboard features the symbols for both forwards tab and back tab on the same key, the back tab symbol being on top to indicate that you need to hold down shift to use that function. EDIT: The 5250 series terminals used the terms "Field Advance" and "Field Backspace" instead of Tab and Back Tab, but otherwise they used the same symbol on the keys, and the keys were located in roughly the same position as the 3270 series. Reference: https://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/5291/GA21-9409-0_5291_Display_Operators_Guide_198212.pdf https://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/5291/GA21-9409-0_5291_Disp...

SirFatty 5mo ago
And this is a great example of why I read the comments on HN stories... thanks for the info! RIP /.
ChuckMcM 5mo ago
Having worked at IBM, I would guess that using the tab key in this way was part of a patent they were pursuing and Microsoft's use would show this to be 'obvious' and thus not patentable. But that is just a guess. In the 80's IBM had a whole class of high level technical people called "Systems Engineers" whose entire job description was to opine on the merits of any given system. Not write systems, not debug them, and certainly not to explain them, it was simply to opine "you're doing it wrong."
- MoonWalk 5mo ago
  Microsoft is suffering from the lack of such a group today; they're definitely doing it wrong, where "it" is pretty much everything... except pissing off users.
  - coredog64 5mo ago
    Microsoft could implement the "Am I doing it wrong?" check via the shell script `/bin/true`
    - Henchman21 5mo ago
      They’d need to install WSL2 first though!
      - rbanffy 5mo ago
        A TRUE: device?
        Henchman21 5mo ago
        As long as I can plug in a serial console and it endlessly spits out 1s!
      - Nition 5mo ago
        It's a Linux subsystem for Windows so we'll call it Windows Subsystem For Linux.
        colejohnson66 5mo ago
        Wasn't that due to trademarks?
        wvenable 5mo ago
        For trademark safety, this is the correct approach. You can say "Blah for XXX" and that's fine but if you say "XXX blah" then you can get into trouble.
- thaumasiotes 5mo ago
  > I would guess that using the tab key in this way was part of a patent they were pursuing and Microsoft's use would show this to be 'obvious' and thus not patentable. Something that's bothered me about user-facing patents: Let's assume that the idea of using a keyboard key to move between input fields in a software form is not obvious, and in fact is a brilliant stroke of genius the likes of which the world is not likely to see again. If that one guy hadn't been born, we would have gone thousands of years with no method, keyboard-based, mouse-based, or otherwise, of moving from one input field to another input field. Every piece of software would use nonconfigurable timers, and you'd just have to hope you could type fast enough. I don't see what the hypothetical benefit of extending patent protection to this brilliant idea is supposed to be. Say you're the company who comes up with the idea. You can benefit by including it in your product, where all your users can see it. In other words, the benefit you get from coming up with this idea is that you can publish it for the world to see, and that's the only way you can benefit from it. A usability feature that your users cannot use or know about doesn't increase usability. Even though the idea isn't obvious, the implementation is. If you disclose your brilliant idea, everyone will copy it and your advantage in the marketplace will be transitory. So... what is the purpose of giving you a patent? That cripples the marketplace, but it fails to realize the benefit of patents, publication. Publication necessarily had to happen anyway.
  - Onavo 5mo ago
    You can say the same about swipe to unlock and that had been litigated to death.
    - thaumasiotes 5mo ago
      I did say the same about swipe-to-unlock: >> Something that's bothered me about user-facing patents
  - philipallstar 5mo ago
    Presumably it's to give you an advantage for putting in the work to develop it for a period of time.
  - 5mo ago
- FartinMowler 5mo ago
  What?!?! I was an IBM Systems Engineer in the late 1980s / early 1990s and that was nothing like my job description.
  - ChuckMcM 5mo ago
    Do you remember what the official definition was? I admit I was working at an internship in FEIS (Field Engineering Information Services) in Colorado and people with that title would occasionally yo-yo in to a meeting make some comment that didn't apply and then yo-yo out again. None of the engineers in the organization had anything but disdain for them. If you were late 80's, I was interning in the late 70's so its entirely possible that they restructured the job responsibilities somewhat. But again I'd really love to see what was the official job description from the time.
- rbanffy 5mo ago
  > I would guess that using the tab key in this way was part of a patent they were pursuing and Microsoft's use would show this to be 'obvious' and thus not patentable. IBM insisting it not to be tab wouldn’t make sense. Microsoft was working for them and the programs should adhere to the CUA (Common User Access) standard.
  - andrewf 5mo ago
    OS/2 1.0 and the first edition of the CUA were both released in December 1987 according to Wikipedia; Raymond's story isn't dated but could've happened before this. (If I had to make a wild guess, I could imagine this request was a side effect of some internal IBM battle about what the CUA should dictate).
    - rbanffy 5mo ago
      I imagine this is mostly about form-based applications, GUI or not, before the Microsoft pulled the rug from under IBM.
MoonWalk 5mo ago
Also conspicuously missing from the story is what key IBM DID want to use. I mean... that's the first question you'd ask! Lame.
- Tempest1981 5mo ago
  Ctrl-F6 ?
  - OhMeadhbh 5mo ago
    Shift Ctrl F6
- yndoendo 5mo ago
  It looks like it they wanted to use their existing special field management keys (field advance and field backspace) with tab being a different user experience. [0] Document does even use the word "Tab". "Field Backspace" seems to duplicate "Home" key usage under some conditions. To be fair, Microsoft & Bill Gates are bad at quality user experience. "Ctrl+F" differs through their applications. [0] https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_ibm525xGA2onDisplaySystemFunctionsReferenceManualM_8040964/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_ibm525xGA2onDisplaySys... *Edited. The more I think of it the current TAB (SHIFT+TAB) key should of been used for entry navigation navigation only while the white space tab should of been something such as "SHIFT+SPACE".
  - MoonWalk 5mo ago
    "To be fair, Microsoft & Bill Gates are bad at quality user experience." In some ways. Gates deserves never-ending enmity for plaguing us with backslashes in paths. But in others, Microsoft advanced the state of UI and UX more than anyone else in the '90s. "Would of?"
    - rbanffy 5mo ago
      > Microsoft advanced the state of UI and UX more than anyone else in the '90s. There is no universe where that is true.
Animats 5mo ago
Here's a real IBM 3270 keyboard.[1] Note the "Next field" key on the left, and the matching "Previous field" key on the right. The IBM 3270 was a device for filling up forms. The mainframe sent the terminal a form with blanks, and the terminal let the user fill in the blanks. The terminal hardware prevented the user from overwriting the static parts of the form, and could apply some other form constraints, such as numeric fields. That was all done by the terminal. When the form was filled in, the user pressed ENTER, and the completed form was sent to the mainframe as one transaction. This approach let one mainframe service huge numbers of terminals. The user never experienced delays while typing and could type at full speed, often without looking. PCs didn't have that usage model. The PC crowd was thinking "typewriter". One of the first terminals for home computers was called the "TV Typewriter". Web forms do have that model, but with less consistency. [1] https://sharktastica.co.uk/resources/images/model_bs/themk_1825028_ibm.jpg https://sharktastica.co.uk/resources/images/model_bs/themk_1...
- ivankelly 5mo ago
  Arrow keys are giving swastika vibes, which I guess fits given IBM’s history
- ch_123 5mo ago
  Nitpick: The terminology used by IBM on the 3270 family (including the 3277 whose keyboard you shared) was "Tab" and "Back tab", not "Next field" and "Previous field".
  - robocat 5mo ago
    Yes: Page 30 of The Operator's Guide for IBM 3270 Information Display Systems calls it a Tab key. Tab also has typamatic capability that allows you to move the cursor quickly from field to field. The Back Tab key moves the cursor back to the first character position in an input field. If the cursor is already in the first character position of an input field, and if you press the Back Tab key, the cursor will then move back to the first character position of the preceding input field. So my guess is that the cursor defaults to being at the start of a field as you navigate, so Tab and Back Tab work as expected. But if you're editing a field and have moved the cursor within the field then Back Tab acts differently. https://usermanual.wiki/Document/GA2727421OperatorsGuideforIBM3270InformationDIsplaySystemsJul72.3056601606.pdf https://usermanual.wiki/Document/GA2727421OperatorsGuideforI...
sedatk 5mo ago
From what I remember, there were two "Enter/Return" keys on IBM 3270 terminals. One was the regular "Return" key we have today, which just advanced to the next field, and didn't submit the form. There was also another "Enter" key where the Right Ctrl key is today, and that submitted the form. So, I presume, instead of being against Tab key, IBM might be against "Return" to be the form submit key as people who use 3270 would expect it to advance to the next field. And that was true for many DOS programs. Pressing Return would just go to the next field, not submit the form. That was one of the things that needed some getting used to on Windows.
- ch_123 5mo ago
  Your memory is correct, and it's interesting to note that on the IBM terminal keyboards, the Enter key was marked "Enter", and the return/new line key was marked "↵". On the classic IBM PC keyboards such as the Model M, the Enter key is marked "↵ Enter". I believe IBM chose this to convey that the Enter key on the PC was both an "Enter" _and_ "Return" key in one. As you say though - individual applications got to chose what that meant in practice, leading to inconsistent behavior.
logickkk1 5mo ago
Funnily enough, IBM had already published this. CUA explicitly says tab and backtab move between fields. so they spent seven layers of management escalating against their own standard: https://archive.org/details/ibmsj2703E/page/n13/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/ibmsj2703E/page/n13/mode/2up
- mrandish 5mo ago
  Not being familiar with the term CUA, I looked it up and TIL something (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access). Since the doc you linked is dated 1988 and CUA was a brand new thing circa OS/2 (at least in traditional IBM timescales), the apparent inconsistency might be down to the massive scale of IBM in those days and organizational propagation delay. Another factor could be still-reverberating echoes of the likely political battles around something as broad and far-reaching as CUA. I can only imagine the quiet boardroom battles won and lost fighting over CUA between different factions across all of IBM's kingdoms, divisions and principalities.
mrandish 5mo ago
> IBM was consistent with their keyboard nomenclature across multiple products, and the 3270 series mainframe terminals used the Tab key While it seems odd in light of IBM's usual adherence to corporate norms across business units, having read a couple different books on the origins of the PC at IBM, it may be related to the entire PC unit in Boca being an extraordinary aberration outside the norm for IBM. Despite seeming hopelessly corporate to the Microsoft team, the Boca IBMers were considered a "Rebel Unit" inside IBM - when they were considered at all, since the vast majority of IBM wasn't even aware of it. Due to being started virtually overnight (in IBM timescales), running incredibly fast and only existing thanks to Thomas Watson, Jr. himself overruling his lieutenants to approve such a "skunk works", Boca didn't have nearly the level of oversight, coordination or control as an effort that size normally would. In the early days Boca ran largely outside normal reporting channels and when they'd try to source tech or components from other parts of IBM, had to sometimes clarify that they were in fact part of IBM.
ButlerianJihad 5mo ago
I am trying to think of other older examples, but I know I have seen it before Workspaces/Chromebook: The upstart adopts all the keyboard shortcuts of the dominant player. Then the existing userbase is comfortable... compatible, with the new and different software. Then, slowly but surely, new novel shortcuts are introduced and you gradually find the “compatible” ones vanishing or conflicting or just glitched, until one day you’re no longer capable of using Apple or Word or Netscape or Excel. I propose that IBM saw that coming, and fought against a future where IBM-trained users easily adopted someone else’s apps.

by ch_123 5mo ago

SirFatty 5mo ago

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

ChuckMcM 5mo ago

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

MoonWalk 5mo ago
Microsoft is suffering from the lack of such a group today; they're definitely doing it wrong, where "it" is pretty much everything... except pissing off users.
- coredog64 5mo ago
  Microsoft could implement the "Am I doing it wrong?" check via the shell script `/bin/true`
  - Henchman21 5mo ago
    They’d need to install WSL2 first though!
    - rbanffy 5mo ago
      A TRUE: device?
      - Henchman21 5mo ago
        As long as I can plug in a serial console and it endlessly spits out 1s!
    - Nition 5mo ago
      It's a Linux subsystem for Windows so we'll call it Windows Subsystem For Linux.
      - colejohnson66 5mo ago
        Wasn't that due to trademarks?
      - wvenable 5mo ago
        For trademark safety, this is the correct approach. You can say "Blah for XXX" and that's fine but if you say "XXX blah" then you can get into trouble.
thaumasiotes 5mo ago
> I would guess that using the tab key in this way was part of a patent they were pursuing and Microsoft's use would show this to be 'obvious' and thus not patentable. Something that's bothered me about user-facing patents: Let's assume that the idea of using a keyboard key to move between input fields in a software form is not obvious, and in fact is a brilliant stroke of genius the likes of which the world is not likely to see again. If that one guy hadn't been born, we would have gone thousands of years with no method, keyboard-based, mouse-based, or otherwise, of moving from one input field to another input field. Every piece of software would use nonconfigurable timers, and you'd just have to hope you could type fast enough. I don't see what the hypothetical benefit of extending patent protection to this brilliant idea is supposed to be. Say you're the company who comes up with the idea. You can benefit by including it in your product, where all your users can see it. In other words, the benefit you get from coming up with this idea is that you can publish it for the world to see, and that's the only way you can benefit from it. A usability feature that your users cannot use or know about doesn't increase usability. Even though the idea isn't obvious, the implementation is. If you disclose your brilliant idea, everyone will copy it and your advantage in the marketplace will be transitory. So... what is the purpose of giving you a patent? That cripples the marketplace, but it fails to realize the benefit of patents, publication. Publication necessarily had to happen anyway.
- Onavo 5mo ago
  You can say the same about swipe to unlock and that had been litigated to death.
  - thaumasiotes 5mo ago
    I did say the same about swipe-to-unlock: >> Something that's bothered me about user-facing patents
- philipallstar 5mo ago
  Presumably it's to give you an advantage for putting in the work to develop it for a period of time.
- 5mo ago
FartinMowler 5mo ago
What?!?! I was an IBM Systems Engineer in the late 1980s / early 1990s and that was nothing like my job description.
- ChuckMcM 5mo ago
  Do you remember what the official definition was? I admit I was working at an internship in FEIS (Field Engineering Information Services) in Colorado and people with that title would occasionally yo-yo in to a meeting make some comment that didn't apply and then yo-yo out again. None of the engineers in the organization had anything but disdain for them. If you were late 80's, I was interning in the late 70's so its entirely possible that they restructured the job responsibilities somewhat. But again I'd really love to see what was the official job description from the time.
rbanffy 5mo ago
> I would guess that using the tab key in this way was part of a patent they were pursuing and Microsoft's use would show this to be 'obvious' and thus not patentable. IBM insisting it not to be tab wouldn’t make sense. Microsoft was working for them and the programs should adhere to the CUA (Common User Access) standard.
- andrewf 5mo ago
  OS/2 1.0 and the first edition of the CUA were both released in December 1987 according to Wikipedia; Raymond's story isn't dated but could've happened before this. (If I had to make a wild guess, I could imagine this request was a side effect of some internal IBM battle about what the CUA should dictate).
  - rbanffy 5mo ago
    I imagine this is mostly about form-based applications, GUI or not, before the Microsoft pulled the rug from under IBM.

MoonWalk 5mo ago

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

Tempest1981 5mo ago
Ctrl-F6 ?
- OhMeadhbh 5mo ago
  Shift Ctrl F6
yndoendo 5mo ago
It looks like it they wanted to use their existing special field management keys (field advance and field backspace) with tab being a different user experience. [0] Document does even use the word "Tab". "Field Backspace" seems to duplicate "Home" key usage under some conditions. To be fair, Microsoft & Bill Gates are bad at quality user experience. "Ctrl+F" differs through their applications. [0] https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_ibm525xGA2onDisplaySystemFunctionsReferenceManualM_8040964/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_ibm525xGA2onDisplaySys... *Edited. The more I think of it the current TAB (SHIFT+TAB) key should of been used for entry navigation navigation only while the white space tab should of been something such as "SHIFT+SPACE".
- MoonWalk 5mo ago
  "To be fair, Microsoft & Bill Gates are bad at quality user experience." In some ways. Gates deserves never-ending enmity for plaguing us with backslashes in paths. But in others, Microsoft advanced the state of UI and UX more than anyone else in the '90s. "Would of?"
  - rbanffy 5mo ago
    > Microsoft advanced the state of UI and UX more than anyone else in the '90s. There is no universe where that is true.

Animats 5mo ago

Here's a real IBM 3270 keyboard.[1] Note the "Next field" key on the left, and the matching "Previous field" key on the right. The IBM 3270 was a device for filling up forms. The mainframe sent the terminal a form with blanks, and the terminal let the user fill in the blanks. The terminal hardware prevented the user from overwriting the static parts of the form, and could apply some other form constraints, such as numeric fields. That was all done by the terminal. When the form was filled in, the user pressed ENTER, and the completed form was sent to the mainframe as one transaction. This approach let one mainframe service huge numbers of terminals. The user never experienced delays while typing and could type at full speed, often without looking. PCs didn't have that usage model. The PC crowd was thinking "typewriter". One of the first terminals for home computers was called the "TV Typewriter". Web forms do have that model, but with less consistency. [1] https://sharktastica.co.uk/resources/images/model_bs/themk_1825028_ibm.jpg https://sharktastica.co.uk/resources/images/model_bs/themk_1...

ivankelly 5mo ago
Arrow keys are giving swastika vibes, which I guess fits given IBM’s history
ch_123 5mo ago
Nitpick: The terminology used by IBM on the 3270 family (including the 3277 whose keyboard you shared) was "Tab" and "Back tab", not "Next field" and "Previous field".
- robocat 5mo ago
  Yes: Page 30 of The Operator's Guide for IBM 3270 Information Display Systems calls it a Tab key. Tab also has typamatic capability that allows you to move the cursor quickly from field to field. The Back Tab key moves the cursor back to the first character position in an input field. If the cursor is already in the first character position of an input field, and if you press the Back Tab key, the cursor will then move back to the first character position of the preceding input field. So my guess is that the cursor defaults to being at the start of a field as you navigate, so Tab and Back Tab work as expected. But if you're editing a field and have moved the cursor within the field then Back Tab acts differently. https://usermanual.wiki/Document/GA2727421OperatorsGuideforIBM3270InformationDIsplaySystemsJul72.3056601606.pdf https://usermanual.wiki/Document/GA2727421OperatorsGuideforI...

sedatk 5mo ago

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

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

logickkk1 5mo ago

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

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

mrandish 5mo ago

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

ButlerianJihad 5mo ago

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