Purpose of a 'mystery key' on IBM PC 3270 keyboard

http://superuser.com/questions/290814/purpose-of-a-mystery-key-on-ibm-pc-3270-keyboard

by billpg • 15 years ago

46 13 15 years ago

superuser.com

byteCoder• 15 years ago

Certainly, it appears that the insert and delete key icons are based on classic proofreader's marks.

The caret above the "a" means insert. The a with the looped line through it means delete.

adestefan2• 15 years ago

> It makes sense. I remember an old guy I knew doing proofreading of a document. To show that a character should be deleted, draw a line starting at the character, going to the upper right, and put a little loop on the end. It looks sort of like that picture!

I'm not that old (30) and was taught all the standard proofreading marks in elementary school. Is this no longer common knowledge?

sathyabhat• 15 years ago

Not in my school.

geoffpado• 15 years ago

I'm only 22 and was taught the same marks in elementary school. I wouldn't have recognized it on the key right away, but once it was mentioned, it made sense.

camiller• 15 years ago

My daughter is only 13, and is in fact being taught the same proofreading marks.

Brashman• 15 years ago

23 here and same deal.

mhd• 15 years ago

Not here in Germany (although the German standard DIN 16511 seems to come pretty close to the US ISO 5776).

ghurlman• 15 years ago

In the US? I'm a few years older than you, and I'd never heard of such a thing - we went straight to word processing on Apple ][s.

adestefan2• 15 years ago

Yes US. I also went to a Catholic grade school so it was one of those things the nuns pounded into our knuckles.

syncsynchalt• 15 years ago

I'm 34 and learned them, wouldn't surprise me if they're not taught now.

GavinB• 15 years ago

This remains the standard mark for deletion in today's publishing industry. Yes, we still often edit books in three to five inch stacks of paper.

Lazlo_Nibble• 15 years ago

People have actually paid me to do editing (the fools!), and I know the standard proofreading marks backwards and forwards, but I still didn't read the graphic on the key as "delete". I might have been able to suss it out if you told me it was supposed to represent an editing mark but looking at it absolutely cold? No way.

The person who designed the keycap probably had to cobble it together from a set of standard characters/symbols. If they'd used a more freehand representation, like the one shown on the 6110344 layout further down the page, it would have been immediately obvious.

corin_• 15 years ago

Not taught in UK education (private, I assume not in state schools either) as of at least a decade ago, I only know them because my mother is an author.

Purpose of a 'mystery key' on IBM PC 3270 keyboard

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