Return key names

[kbdfr]

In any case, the discussion shows that inventing new names would rather add to the confusion than eliminate it.

Anorexic-ass…

[Daniel Beardsmore]

That is not a J.

[Muirium]

Looks more like a (horizontally flipped) folder icon to me! Too portly.

[kbdfr]

JRET and LRET are both correct, you just have to rotate the keyboard 90° clockwise to see it!

I have no idea WTF alphabet you're using ... but it ain't one with a "J" in it.

This is a J.

I would rather call this one bigfoot

[webwit]

Nice, but there is already the Alps Bigfoot and the IBM Model F Bigfoot.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Considering how pathetic most people's handwriting is, maybe no-one actually knows what their own alphabet looks like.

J and L are not interchangeable!

Asplode.jpg (140.05 KiB) Viewed 5963 times

[7bit]

WRONG!

JRET-for_real.png (1005 Bytes) Viewed 5961 times

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Oh, you're the person who printed one of the connector diagrams in the BBC Micro User Guide back to front ...

[7bit]

Here comes the LRET that does not fit on Cherry keyboards and is not in the repertoire of SP (the mounts go vertical not horizontal):

LRET-big_ass.png (1.24 KiB) Viewed 5946 times

Cherry LRET:

[kps]

Well, just call them ⅂RET and ⅃RET.

[7bit]

Nooooo!!!! The names must be writable in 7bit ASCII!!!

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Well, just call them ⅂RET and ⅃RET.

Actually that would be quite funny. I've been typing directly in Unicode for ages — I haven't had to suffer 7-bit encodings (e-mail encodings aside) since 1994.

[scottc]

Nooooo!!!! The names must be writable in 7bit ASCII!!!

Code: Select all

_
 | - ret

and

Code: Select all

_| - ret

Better?

[7bit]

No, worse actually!

The first one is in 2 rows and both contain '|' which I use as a data field separator in tables!

Code: Select all

HONEY/JRET            |  1|  6|U|  -1|J-Return_key_(grey)
HONEY/JRET/RED        |  1|  6|U|  -1|J-Return_key_(red)
HONEY/JRET/BLACK      |  1|  8|U|  -1|J-Return_key_(black)
BLANK/JRET/GREY       |  1|  5|U|  -1|blank_key_JRET_(grey)
BLANK/JRET/WHITE      |  1|  5|U|  -1|blank_key_JRET_(white)
BLANK/JRET/RED        |  1|  5|U|  -1|blank_key_JRET_(red)
BLANK/JRET/BLACK      |  1|  5|U|  -1|blank_key_JRET_(black)

[kps]

both contain '|' which I use as a data field separator in tables!

But… but… ASCII already has its own perfectly good field separator character! Next thing you'll tell us you don't use the group separator, record separator, or unit separator either.

␃

[Daniel Beardsmore]

kps is back — we might get some new pictures of his ultra-rare MX switches ;-)

I was trying to devise something suitable for altering my world-view towards random and inconsistent Latin alphabet abuse, but I am no Heath Robinson and I have a very poor concept of 3D, so the following half-complete nonsense will have to suffice.

Keycapsulator.jpg (155.09 KiB) Viewed 5906 times

That huge smudge has suddenly appeared on my camera, and I've cleaned the lens, so I have no idea what it is and what's causing it. Maybe I need a new camera, but I'm too afraid of ending up with something worse (worse UI, worse controls, worse image noise from too-small pixels etc, no ability to modify the SD card from within USB mass storage (as with the Lumix)) ... that smudge though is starting to get on my nerves, and I have some photos I am not even sure I can retouch it out of them.

[webwit]

I think ANSI/ISO is the best, simply because it is already established as a standard, and in fact they are the shape defined by those standards, whether the total keyboard layouts encountered may wildly vary or not. If you want to give them cool names, name 'em Denise and Fat Agnus.

As a matter of exercise, it would also be cool to name them after the keyboard which introduced it. The Sparcstation Return. The VT100 Return (these are incorrect examples, I didn't do any research, just examples). In the same way, inverted T would become the DEC LK201 arrow keys. But this would be too hardcore!

Or take that example from "Inverted T" and make it "Inverted J" Return

[Muirium]

Re: image blemish. It'll be on the sensor. I had mine cleaned mine the other day, big improvement. My brother was over and has the right kit. Basically air and the right kind of finicky brush.

[webwit]

That huge smudge etc.

Finally I know the origin of your avatar.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

There's a load of dust on one of the inner lenses, but the sensor itself is only ~2.5 mm across, so that speck would have to be really small to take up so little of the frame if it's on the sensor. I'd only end up with a broken camera with more dust inside it afterwards than there was inside it to begin with. I would love a new camera, but I'd be here until 2016 trying to find one that didn't suck more than the one I already have. (It's an ultracompact with all the controls on the back and a really superb UI, and fairly good macro capability, but apparently low on sensitivity compared to other brands. Ideally I'd have the same thing but with a better sensor, remove the desire to adjust white balance when it's explicitly set to manually calibrated, and work out why it overexposes so much on super macro+flash shots, to the point that I can only fill the centre 1/9th grid square. Nothing insurmountable, but all the reviews I read of this camera sang its praises, until I read an accurate review after I'd ordered it that pointed out that the sensor sucks ..... that website was spot on.)

I wish I could leave all the people who are actually good at photography to take the photos …

[Daniel Beardsmore]

That huge smudge etc.

Finally I know the origin of your avatar.

Nope. Try again.

[webwit]

I had a reasonable camera in the 400-500 EUR range (got it used and cheaper), but it stopped working. Then I took my photos using a Galaxy S4, and now I've "upgraded" to a cheapo Sony Cyber-shot. I figured one either gets something really good and really gets into it, or you might just as well buy cheap. Cheap can give reasonable results as long as the light is good and you have no expectations about real macro shots.

Galaxy S4 (quite unnatural in this light but ended up quite artsy/cool):


Sony Cyber-shot (needed to correct the white a lot, it was quite blue and still not right, details aren't bad for such a small camera):

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Who said I wanted cheap? I just don't want a boat anchor in my coat pocket that will turn it into a pendulum that affects my balance. My desire is for something small and pocketable, though.

[webwit]

Like a cheap Sony Cyber-shot. Because really good and expensive means bulky and big lenses.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I have essentially vowed to never buy Sony again. They truly are evil.

I remember what mobile phone cameras used to be like — useless postage stamp pictures that were more noise than signal. The iPhone camera can now achieve macro shots with high sensitivity with tiny little fixed lens under strip lighting with no flash, so it stands to reason that a "full" ultracompact camera with much larger lens should be able to achieve pretty impressive images. After all, I bought this camera back in 2005! It's just over eight years old.

Obviously you won't get the perfection of a proper camera. The problem is mainly the meddler's one-step-forward-two-steps-backward approach to product design where the baby-bathwater approach is preferred over incremental improvement. After years of D-series Dell laptops, the then-new E series introduced a new palm rest texture that greased up in 20 minutes. It was not possible to configure one for anyone without wearing plastic gloves, as it looked so dreadful. Apparently Dell couldn't simply change the colour of the perfectly good, completely stain-free plastic they'd been using for years — that would be too easy. Windows 8 is the ultimate example of the "customers won't think it's new unless we change everything that's not broken until it definitely is" attitude of the management in the industry. It's all too easy to end up with a dire product simply because some pinhead figured he'd get a bigger bonus from some dimwitted idea. Or just cheap, or maybe no idea at all — is my OptiPlex 9010 so loud because its got some crappy fan that cost 0.01 cents less than some other marginally less crappy fan, or is the technology world just not ready to have a Core i7 3.4 GHz CPU inside a slim form chassis with so little airflow? The left side panel is sheet metal and stone cold, so it doesn't seem to be getting too hot. My cable router is far warmer than the other side panel, which for all I know is being heated by the router, not the CPU.

I do know someone who bought a Canon compact camera and installed community firmware on it, so there are some interesting alternatives if the software sucks, but for example, I can toggle shoot/preview with a thumb button instead of the usual retarded horizontal dial or some really fiddly slider that feels like it's superglued down. You can't replace a bad sensor or the ubiquitous terrible product design.

I have no idea ... photography isn't my subject, but muggins here ends up having to do it all .....

[Findecanor]

Back on topic:
I have not seen any suggestion that I think is better than "vertical" or "horizontal".
These names would also work for keyboards where the Return key is neither an ISO or ANSI-layout key. There are keyboards with a vertical Return keys one row down or a horizontal Return keys one row up. The µTron has a vertical Return key also.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Huge ISO:

http://deskthority.net/keyboards-f2/tou ... t5401.html

[Muirium]

Findecanor's right about vertical vs. horizontal. They're good category names, if not specific titles for individual Return varieties. Although vertical is where all the variety is. How many kinds of horizontal Return are out there besides ANSI?

Veering back off topic again: I can answer Daniel about why Windows 8 looks so different. Unlike Dell (who really are just nincompoops at the top and can't tell the difference between improvement and degradation in industrial design when their designers present it to them) Microsoft's trying to make a play for the future of computing. They know as well as Intel does just how ultimately screwed they are if they can't break out of the desktop platform.

I can't say I agree with their implementation of Windows 8, but the motive is perfectly reasonable. Being the Microsoft of a dying remnant of technology isn't healthy. They have carte blanche to drive their remaining users insane as they try to figure out what they're doing. Those users are the best trained bunch on earth to endure such treatment, after all!

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Oh, I know what Microsoft were going for, but what they actually accomplished, was something altogether different. Apparently the fact that Apple designed a whole new GUI for mobile devices, but left the desktop OS alone, went over Microsoft's head. Apple are trying to gently merge the two paradigms. Microsoft just put a load of random ideas along with Windows 7 in the blender and shoved the resulting mess into everything. The result just looks like they were panicking and taking recreational drugs to help cope with the strain of their reactionary development model, with the effects seeping out into the garish aesthetics.

[Muirium]

If they ever do rid themselves of Ballmer (it's not a done deal yet, as proven by Gates) they really need to get a grip and choose a viable direction. The forced universal interface they're banging away on now has "Windows Everywhere! Whoo!" written all over it. Lessons take new minds to learn.

As for cameras: Canon and Nikon both stink at interfaces like only Adobe can in the software world. And just like Adobe, their users are deeply invested in those idiosyncrasies, have the rabbit warrens memorised blind, and fight every iota of change. Wünderbar!