Re: h j k l -- keys

On Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 6:53 PM, Charlie Kester <corky1951@comcast.net> wrote:

On 12/16/2011 09:35 PM, Marty Fried wrote:

I have a slightly different theory...  Ctrl-H is the ASCII backspace
character, so it was chosen for back.  Ctrl-J is the linefeed character,
so it was chosen for down.  Both of those match each other.  The other
two just happen to be nearby, so they were enlisted to fill in.

But this raises the question:
*why* did ASCII assign those particular meanings to those characters
in the first place?

Perhaps that convention arose for the same reason as hjkl for cursor movement?  I.e., no arrow keys on the original keyboards  (which in ASCII's case probably means teletypes rather than computers.)

One thing to keep in mind is that the ASCII codes were not really meant to be something that the user typed in, they were *control codes* for controlling printing and display.  But some of them were used by users sometimes, and most users knew things like backspace, XON, XOFF, EOF, etc.  But I think they were just chosen by what was available, with no regard for mnemonics, or anything.  Ctrl-G was bell, Ctrl-M was carriage return, Ctrl-J was linefeed; none of these are related to anything.
--
Marty Fried
Leftcoast, USA

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