Re: Undocumented Legacy Keys in Text Fields (and Notepad)
- From: "Pegasus \(MVP\)" <I.can@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2008 00:28:41 +0200
"Veli-Pekka Tätilä" <vtatila@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:48d96905$0$25390$9b536df3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi, I've discovered the following undocumented keys in Windows edit
fields:
ctrl+h: delete char (like backspace)
ctrl+i: indent a level (like tab)
ctrl+(j/m): line break (like enter)
ctrl+del: delete till end of line (not delete next word as in RTF fields
or editors)
ctrl+backspace: insert char 127 (not delete previous word, like in RTF and
most editors)
Does anyone know the history of the rather Emacs-like ctrl+(h/j) i.e. why
are these keys used in Windows while most of the other Unixisms such as
ctrlk for kill line aren't? Similarly, what's up with the broekn
ctrl+backspace and why doesn't ctrl+del work symmetrically to it?
I reckon one source of inspiration for many of the keys we think of as
Windows-like has been IBM's common user access (CUA) standard.
Granted, this would be just knitpicking if it was Notepad only, but my
observations apply to any app using an edit control or subclassing from
one. So the keys are about as global as you can get affecting anything
from Windows NT3.1 software to Vista I reckon.
I guess these lesser used and hardly documented keys are quite an obscure
thing to many. Kinda like using = and - to chek and clear checkboxes. That
is something I only ran across when reading the default message processing
docs for the checkbox control in MSDN. This is one of the combos I've seen
documented almost nowhere, be it the XP help, the Windows keyboard guide
or the Windows accessibility guide and so on.
Being legally blind I've always been a heavy keyboard user. Even mmy MSC
is related, as it is about keyboard usability suggesting several
improvements to existing keyboard interfaces. English abstract:
http://vtatila.kapsi.fi/msc.html
Would be neat if someone here knew the history behind the said keys in
edit fields.
Finally, on an OT:ish site note Where can I give Vista accessibility
Feedback? The Explorer overwrite dialog and sorted list view column don't
respect prefs with high contrast schemes, for instance.
--
With kind regards Veli-Pekka Tätilä
Accessibility, Apps and Coding plus Synths and Music:
http://vtatila.kapsi.fi
The codes you discovered are the standard ASCII control codes which were
first defined in 1963 - see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascii.
.
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- From: Veli-Pekka Tätilä
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