On Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 6:53 PM, Charlie Kester <[email protected]>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 -- You received this message from the "vim_use" maillist. Do not top-post! Type your reply below the text you are replying to. For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php
