Re: Little niggiling problems
- From: FYIS™ <Danl™@no-spam.net>
- Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2008 17:27:29 -0400
cg <cgrams7@{removethis}yahoo.com> wrote in
news:ag5004h5e0kua1e2ujda8m24eieogemggk@xxxxxxx:
You know, those every day things that just aren't the way you think
they should be but never seem to be corrected. For instance, every
CD/DVD drive I've ever had has the eject button below the tray. Not
so bad when opening but a pain (admittedly a small one) when
closing.
Any others?
I have never yet seen a keyboard that properly connected the "Caps
Lock" button and the "Shift" button. If caps lock is on, and you hit
shift, caps lock is supposed to turn off, and it's been that way since
the mechanical typewriters of the 1920's. I have yet to see it work
correctly on a computer keyboard.
Cuz Caps Lock is not Shift Lock.
Because the Shift key required more force to push (its mechanism was moving a much larger mass than other keys), and was operated by the "pinky" finger (normally the weakest finger on the hand), it was difficult to hold the Shift down for more than two or three consecutive strokes. The "Shift Lock" key (the precursor to the modern Caps Lock) allowed the shift operation to be maintained indefinitely. Unlike the today's Caps Lock, however, the Shift Lock was a two-key operation: Shift would be held down, and the Shift Lock (normally directly above) would be pressed simultaneously, triggering a simple lock mechanism. To unlock, Shift was tapped again, releasing both keys and unshifting the basket.
In QWERTY keyboards, though the caps lock mode capitalizes letters, it does not affect other keys, such as numbers or punctuation, in the way that the shift key does. A version of caps lock that affects all keys as shift does exists on certain layouts such as the French AZERTY and those of some older computers, including the Commodore 64; this function is called shift lock. The origin of the function is found on mechanical typewriters, where the shift key causes the type apparatus to physically shift to produce capitals and secondary characters. To lock this mechanism in place, a special non-character key could be depressed along with shift. The mechanism would not unlock until after pressing a shift key or shift lock again. Some operating systems and window managers allow caps lock to be used for a similar function.
http://en.wikipedia.org/
DanlK
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- Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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