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Key symbols we lost to time, pt. 2: The Mac side
- gus_massa 6d ago> You turned it sideways. Using a colon, a dash, and a parenthesis character in series, you could make a sideways smile or frown. It looked like this: [happy-face] or [sad-face] Did the editor repace :) with [happy-face]?
- Cockbrand 6d agoMaybe the author uses a CMS that's supposed to replace tags like [happy-face] with an emoji, but something broke?
- fasola 6d ago??? This isn’t on the linked page.
- gus_massa 6d agoWrong thread. The correct one is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49767371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49767371
- dmd 6d agoHow does that even happen? HN software hiccup? Or what?
- gus_massa 6d agoProbably my bad. I guess: Click on the HN discussion > Click on the article > Notice the weird CMS error > Copy the sentense > Click back > Click back again by mistake(?) > Click on the discussion of the wrong article (?) > Paste the sentence > Notice that HN eat the emoji > Add the version in brackets.
- DroneBetter 6d ago> There was also the Japanese JIS standard keyboard is a particularly humorous instance of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAS_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAS_syndrome
- applfanboysbgon 6d agoI don't think I've ever seen someone do this from both sides of the same abbreviation (eg. Automated ATM Machine) before now, that's quite amusing.
- flomo 6d ago[flagged]
- messe 6d ago> I gonna be generous and guess this was upvoted as top post for being maybe possibly midwit-correct, hoho you are so right good sire, reddit-fedora-tip herpdy-derp. You may want to look in a mirror. Your snide tone does not add anything here.
- voidUpdate 6d ago"Japanese Japanese Industrial Standards standard keyboard"
- flobosg 6d agoThere is no Japan Standard Institute but Japanese Industrial Standards (JIS) and Japanese Industrial Standards Commitee (JISC).
- TacticalCoder 6d agoI never understood people complaining about "ATM machine": I mean, I get it. Everybody knows what an ATM is and we know it's a machine, so it is redundant. But if I didn't have a japanese keyboard and family living in Japan since 30 years, I wouldn't necessarily know what: "There was also the JIS keyboard" would refer to. While: "There was also the japanese JIS standard keyboard" is crystal clear. Even if, technically, it's quite redundant. Another pet peeve of mine: I hate it when articles are full of acronyms without at least the acronym being explained the first time it's used in TFA (The Fucking Article). At times there are TFAs posted here with so many acronyms that you get comments saying: "I don't know what most of these acronyms mean". And I regularly have to cut/paste sentences into Gemini and ask it: "Explain the acronyms". So, even if it's a bit funny, please more "japanese JIS standard". Much more.
- amelius 6d agoNo amount of drooling over Apple keyboards will make me forget that Apple's designers didn't add keys for basic functions such as Copy and Paste, Undo and Redo.
- Cockbrand 6d agoThe Extended Keyboard II came with a plastic overlay for the function keys. It showed Cut/Copy/Paste for F2/F3/F4 respectively. See https://chrispeak.com/2022/04/08/apple-extended-ii https://chrispeak.com/2022/04/08/apple-extended-ii for a photo. Not sure if this was ever supported system-wide in any way, though.
- kps 6d agoThe Extended Keyboard not-II had the words printed below they keys. https://deskthority.net/wiki/File:Apple_M0115_top.jpg https://deskthority.net/wiki/File:Apple_M0115_top.jpg
- Cockbrand 5d agoNow that you're mentioning it, I seem to remember seeing or even owning Extended Keyboard IIs with the same print. I may be wrong, though.
- spijdar 6d agoHaving seen laptops with dedicated copy/paste/undo/redo keys, I think Apple can be forgiven for not going down the function key rabbit hole: https://pomelo.shockfox.net/pub/img/powerlite.jpg https://pomelo.shockfox.net/pub/img/powerlite.jpg (Yes, they could have just replaced the "regular" function keys with copy/paste keys, but I feel like that would have gone over about as well as the various times they've, uh, tried to replace the function keys)
- amelius 6d agoThe least they could have done was print "Copy", "Paste", etc. on the keys that we now use for those tasks.
- Cockbrand 6d agoThe weird Canadian helm icon on the Control key caught my eye in particular.
- Findecanor 6d agoThe symbols are from a weird ISO/IEC standard (9995-7 ?) that never really caught on except in a few places. I have seen the lock-key symbols more often on lock light panels than on keycaps.
- bawolff 6d agoI recall seeing that on typewriters when i was a kid (in the 90s). I dont know if i ever saw it on a computer keyboard.
- behnamoh 6d agoI wonder why people stopped adding symbols to ASCII. The number row on Macs is just these characters: ~!@#$%^&*()_+ And every programming language uses a subset of these. But why these symbols? Why didn't people add more symbols to the keyboard?
- deleted 6d ago[deleted]
- kevin_thibedeau 6d agoASCII is 7-bit and fully filled out. Every other extended character system prior to Unicode was sporadically supported. C has digraphs and trigraphs because even the ASCII punctuation wasn't guaranteed to be available on all keyboards. IBM, notably had an APL typeball for their Selectric derived terminals but that was equivalent to switching character sets and not something that could be considered universal prior to Unicode.
- II2II 6d agoASCII is a 7-bit code, so there are only so many symbols one can add. Prior to ASCII, you had codes that used as few as 5 bits. Early C had the option to use digraphs to represent various forms of parenthesis, simply because symbols like {} and [] were not universal. (Strictly speaking, people did continue adding symbols. We used to talk about code pages: when the MSB was 0, the other 7 bits were ASCII. When the MSB was 1, the other 7 bits were a user selected code pade.)
- Findecanor 6d agoMany European layouts do have more symbols outside ASCII. For example German has ° (degree) and ß (ess-tset) and § (paragraph). German PC keyboards also tend to have µ on the M key, but it is available with the right Alt key. Macintosh keyboard layouts tend to have many symbols on Option-combinations but they are not always printed.
- kps 6d ago>And every programming language uses a subset of these. You might like https://juliamono.netlify.app/#fnref:zscode https://juliamono.netlify.app/#fnref:zscode
- Sardtok 6d agoAaaah, he's got carriage return and enter mixed up. The whole reason for the symbol being an arrow returning to the beginning of the line, is because it's the return key. I love the Canadian enter symbol, an arrow pointing into a box.
- fasola 6d agoEnter appropriated the same “arrow returning” symbol long ago, and the key is colloquially known more often as Enter these days.
- Sardtok 6d agoYes, but he calls the enter key return and the return key enter.
- fasola 6d agoNo. He calls the big one Enter presumably in recognition that’s what people know it as (check how any cross-platform web app calls it), and the numpad one Return/Enter because that’s what it is collectively known as across all the platforms. This all makes sense to me. Since the keys on the photos don’t have labels, this feels better for a reader in 2026 than being overly pedantic.
- tom_ 6d agoRight, but if you're referring to Return as Enter, then there's no reason to refer to Enter as Return. The reason for the change is that people don't distinguish the two. If we're going to eliminate this distinction, we should do it properly! (I've had blank looks from a few colleagues after suggesting they press the Return key (that being the term I used to refer to the Return key) - which makes me wonder what percentage of people even know that Return is the name of a key. Perhaps we should retire the term entirely.)
- fasola 6d ago
- xnx 6d ago2008 song about the Apple key by Hot Lava: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts3tLs6xB1U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts3tLs6xB1U
- domh 6d agoAlso Alt-J, whose logo Δ can be obtained by pressing alt+j on a Mac: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-J https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-J
- RugnirViking 6d agolooking at the mac keyboard im typing on, there is no key called "alt". There is one called option, and pressing opt+k gives me ∆. Wonder why that changed? (or if it did?)
- msephton 5d agoAlt/Opt/⌥ label also depends on age/region/etc, as outlined in the blog post. You can see an example of a key with "Alt" in the second image of the post. Personally, I'm particularly fond of the "electronic switch" glyph ⌥ used to denote Option, which I first saw in the manual for classic Macintosh app: UltraPaint, 1990 by Deneba Systems, so dated around the beginning of Unicode. My early aluminium Apple A1243 2171 Wired Keyboard, British layout dated 2007, has it labelled with both Alt and ⌥. (BTW my keyboard is still going strong at 18 years old with only the shift key replaced after I wore it completely through.)
- RugnirViking 5d agoInteresting. Wonder why its also shifted to opt/alt + k instead of j
- II2II 6d agoI'm wondering where those Canadian keyboards are used. I live in Canada, have seen plenty of multilingual keyboards, and have seen those symbols perhaps once. Even so I can't be sure it was on a keyboard. I just recognized one of the symbols.
- kps 6d agoQuébec and federal governments.
- bawolff 6d agoI suspect its Quebec only
- II2II 6d agoPerhaps, but I really don't know why a French keyboard would be different in Quebec compared to a French keyboard in the rest of Canada. There is a picture of a MacBook keyboard from another poster in this thread, which is what I would expect.
- bawolff 6d agoProbably the stores in english canada mostly just sell english keyboards (after all you can change the keymapping in OS). Maybe it would be different in a city that is 50-50, but if you are in a city that is 90-10 english, probably not a lot of people are stocking french keyboards.
- II2II 6d agoI have picked up a couple laptops with French Canadian layouts over the years and have encountered said layouts in French immersion schools, so I'm no stranger to them. That said, I'm not a French speaker, so I never looked into variations.
- alentred 6d agoSomewhat related: I live in France but have learnt computing on a QWERTY US keyboard back in the days, not AZERTY. As a result the only keyboard layout I can use without losing my sanity is a QWERTY US MacBook with a Canadian layout - I have my Q right where I want it, Enter key is lined up in the middle row, # $ % * are there for coding, and all the accents é è à ^ ç are there too. Thank you, Canada.
- stuart78 6d agoFrom a visual perspective I miss some of those more esoteric symbols, but the current Apple (US) keyboard gets it right. Symbols with text labels for modifiers and clear pictographs for the function keys (though the F3/Mission Control icon is a bit unclear until you click i and the behavior of F5/mic seems unhelpful). I just remember a few too many family tech support issues trying to help a struggling relative understand that command and 'open apple' are the same thing.
- bhouston 6d agoI think the increased use of symbols was because both Europe and Canada are multilingual m, right?
- pell 6d agoEurope is also a little off here. Different countries use different layouts across Europe.
- cosmic_cheese 6d agoOn the JIS 2003 model, the more traditional Control position is great (it’s how I map my boards) but the Caps Lock positioning is really good too and makes so much sense with how infrequently it’s used. Very little risk of accidentally hitting it. I wonder why more boards haven’t adopted it.
- wa2flq 6d agoAll this micro-management of these standards only serves to confuse people and ultimately causes entry errors and wastes time. Go find the relevant XKCD comic on your own. I personally miss the Plato IV Plasma Terminal Keyboard - https://codex.retro1.org/plato:tutor:plato_keyboard https://codex.retro1.org/plato:tutor:plato_keyboard and http://xahlee.info/kbd/plato_iv_keyboard.html http://xahlee.info/kbd/plato_iv_keyboard.html . Those keys on the right with represented many common functions. But the entire keyboard was designed for a future where computers would facilitate many worlds, not just a replacement for a typewriter or calculator.
- cesaref 6d agoI think back in the day (say the late 80s) it became apparent to those in charge that this new IT thing was going to be very important in the workplace, and that it was going to be important to train up people to operate computers. Given those in charge were probably one finger typists if that, and befuddled by technology, they would collectively have decided that computers should be standardised so that learnt skills would be transferrable, and therefore they probably imposed ideas like standardised keyboard layouts. Of course it turned out that the next generation were totally capable of operating computers without any formal training, were totally fine with different operating systems, different keyboard layouts, different applications etc, and so there was probably lots of wasted effort solving a non-existent problem.
- reaperducer 6d agoI enjoyed the post, but it always bothers me when tech people don't know the difference between Return and Enter. Panic, for example, gets this right. In Transmit, pressing Return connects to a server. Pressing Enter enters rename mode.
- alentred 6d agoVery nice post, I love computer history and lore and this fits just right! I would also add ZX Spectrum keyboard with all the keywords on it. G/GOTO, L/LET, P/PRINT etc. Was lots of fun. We should have engraved common actions on the keys when we could, before every software invented its own set of keyboard shortcuts.
- kensai 6d agoI always find icons better than text, given that you don't know the exact linguistic background of the user. Thus for me the Canadian keyboard makes more sense than everything. I think the latest keyboards from Apple also go this direction, exchanging text for icons.
- m463 6d agoI too thought the 2003 keyboard was the best design, but for ergonomic reasons. They did it right with respect to key shape. - the keys were scuplted. This eliminated touch-typing problems because your fingers would find the edges of keys then self-center in the middle of a concave surface. - the modifier keys were convex, so you could detect them easily - you could plug the mouse into the keyboard. (though there were power problems with higher-powered mice) I really hated it when they went to flat keyboards. Functionality went out the window. You couldn't find the center of keys, so it was easier to make mistakes because of lack of feel. The only nice thing I could say about them is that they were attractive to look at in a way, and the short throw was very light.
- mig39 6d agoThe Canadian keyboards are so Canada: supposed to appeal to either English or French users, but just pisses them off. English speakers go for the US layout, and French speakers go for a European layout. I remember some of our early Chromebooks had Canadian keyboards, and students and teachers revolted.
- jszymborski 6d agoEvery I know in Montreal uses the CSA/ACNOR layout if they're writing French and nobody uses AZERTY (unless you've recently arrived from France, of which many folks here have). We were all taught to use keyboards printed in the US keyboard, but swapping the virtual layout to Canadian French when writing French, which is what I still do.
- gucci-on-fleek 6d ago> Every I know in Montreal uses the CSA/ACNOR layout if they're writing French and nobody uses AZERTY There are two different Canadian QWERTY keyboard layouts suited for typing French though: the one called "Canadian French" (or something similar) where most of the accents are on dead keys [0], or the one called "Canadian Multilingual Standard" (or "CSA" or "ACNOR") where most of the accented letters have dedicated keys [1]. I personally use the CSA layout, but my impression was that that's uncommon, since my French teacher thought that I was crazy when I told her I used that layout. And this comment [2] suggests something similar. But I also live in Alberta, so I'm not exactly in the best location to see what most French Canadians use :) > We were all taught to use keyboards printed in the US keyboard, but swapping the virtual layout to Canadian French when writing French Same here, but I had assumed that that was only because I was in Alberta where there aren't many French people/keyboards. [0]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KB_Canadian_French.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KB_Canadian_French.s... [1]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KB_Canadian_Multilingual_Standard.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KB_Canadian_Multilin... [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49781647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49781647
- jszymborski 5d ago
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- mr_big_bowls 5d agoThe Copy/Paste thing is kinda funny. If you don't already know Cmd+C and Cmd+V, the keyboard gives you zero clue what they do. I get why Apple didn't add a bunch of extra keys though. At some point you'd just have a keyboard full of random buttons. Still, having a real Delete key on a MacBook would be pretty nice lol.