Unpopular opinions thread

[depletedvespene]

Like BAE. In and of itself, that enormous key isn't THAT BAD in and of itself — it's the 1U Backspace the true evil (and the various fixes to avoid that are also pretty bad, too).

Exactly! Just like communism is a great idea, if only individual human beings didn't have free will, group loyalties, personal interests and their own opinions, and so needed "fixed" to fit the system. Big if! The same pattern of argument can be used against every philosophy. And, far more importantly: keyboard layout.

Speaking of which—to off-topic this off-topic—my complaint about ISO is similar to yours against Big Booty Return. I don't mind the double deck ISO Return key per se. My fury is all about that ridiculous shrunken Left Shift which forever partners it. Left Shift is my main shift! That's the one I use with arrow keys for function's sake! (Also applies with the right hand centric Fn arrow layer on HHKB.) I'm lighter on Right Shift, yet it's the one that's retained in all its outsized glory on so many keyboards, while its left partner is either small or tiny! Gah. It's so wrong, it's not even symmetrical. I don't even…

The keyboard itself isn't symmetrical, and its general shape and number of keys is something that I've tinkered with (you've seen some of it in my posts). Now THIS is we take the role of leaders, decide on a good shape for the keyboard and then exact it on the world at large, not caring for the (short-term) unpopularity of it.

We could end this once and for all, and have equal-sized mods on either side, neither of them too big or too small, but all of them in just the right size...

[kbdfr]

Just because you can’t cope with a 1u Backspace or a short right Shift doesn’t make it inherently bad,
rather blame your own incapacity

And never rant about lack of symmetry in ISO boards without at the same time mentioning
that stupid, ugly, ridiculous 1.5u key above the ANSI Enter

[Muirium]

It’s called Backspace!

[depletedvespene]

It’s called Backspace!

And it's best represented by the ⌫ symbol.

[kbdfr]

It’s called Backspace!

And it's best represented by the ⌫ symbol.

1u Backspace.jpg (301.72 KiB) Viewed 10540 times

[depletedvespene]

You know something is undeniably true when kbdfr and I agree on it.

[ZedTheMan]

It's a good symbol. Should never be 1u though for how often the plurality of us make mistakes.

[Muirium]

Indeed. I like it 50% bigger, and perfectly symmetrical with Tab. As seen on my HHKB with the KBDfans icon mods set:



Notably easier to hit when a row closer to home, too. Truly, the HHKB has this so right it’s not even arguable for me.

[zrrion]

I like how colemack does the backspace, by putting it where caps lock would normally be. Home row backspace and home row enter. It works well on boards with a BAE and 1u backspace. Anything is better than a 1u backspace.

[depletedvespene]

Indeed. I like it 50% bigger, and perfectly symmetrical with Tab. As seen on my HHKB with the KBDfans icon mods set:

2U Backspace is best because real men and real women are not afraid of doubling down on correcting a mistake they have made.

Jokes aside, If Enter weren't located there...

Heck, in my first computer computer keyboard, the RETURN key was that R2 1.5U key; an 1.25 CAPS key was right below and BACKSPACE and BREAK were the two 1U keys right above... a perfect receipt for much annoyance for kids still learning the ropes of how to use a keyboard.

[kbdfr]

Now I understand why your answer to my comment:

[…] And never rant about lack of symmetry in ISO boards without at the same time mentioning
that stupid, ugly, ridiculous 1.5u key above the ANSI Enter

was

It’s called Backspace!

You meant your bizarre HKKB instead of the usual layout:

HKKB ANSI against normal ANSI.jpg (27.97 KiB) Viewed 10391 times

So yes, "that stupid, ugly, ridiculous 1.5u key above the ANSI Enter"

[kbdfr]

And as we are in the "Unpopular opinions thread":

Still wondering...
After all, you all learnt typing on keyboards with a fully illogic and arbitrary arrangement of the alpha keys,
but you can't get used to a 1u Backspace?

[Chyros]

That's what we learned to type with as well xD .

[depletedvespene]

And as we are in the "Unpopular opinions thread":

Still wondering...
After all, you all learnt typing on keyboards with a fully illogic and arbitrary arrangement of the alpha keys,
but you can't get used to a 1u Backspace?

Because I am a clumsy git who still mistypes from time to time due to imprecise hand movements (see my "lament for the pingmaster" thread). The BACKQUOTE key is in the top left corner, but is close enough to the left pinky to be used without issue; OTOH, the BACKSPACE key is 1U further away to the right pinky... and 2U further away if it's just 1U in size — far enough to be uncomfortable. YMWSV.

... especially if it turns out that one uses the annular finger instead, to press Backspace.

I still wonder, while we're at "arbitrary arrangements", if the BACKQUOTE key would be a good place to put Delete on. If nothing else, it would not have to change directions when writing in a right-to-left alphabet? I guess?

[Findecanor]

Fitt's law says that often-used keys farther away are easier to select if they are bigger. Thus there is a metric that could be applied that says that 2u Backspace is objectively better than 1u Backspace.

Other than that, it's about habit: I learned to type on a C64 and Amiga with 1u Delete/Backspace. But then I used PC keyboards with 2u Backspace keys for twenty years and now I find 1u Backspace difficult.

[bhtooefr]

...I grew up with a 1.5 U Delete key where Backspace is located on modern keyboards (truncated ANSI layout), but it was an Apple //c.

What this means is... early Apple IIs didn't have any dedicated destructive backspace key. Instead, they had left and right arrows, and everything before about 1983 (and an annoying amount of software afterwards, including the firmware console, which was heavily used by other software) didn't support Delete. Instead, you were just expected to move the cursor left and overstrike (which was, thankfully, almost always the default). But, programs that did support Delete (which invariably used it as a destrictive backspace) tended to be in insert mode by default.

So, the usual dance was hit Delete, if it did what you wanted, great, if it didn't, you got a ▒ character added and had to use an additional left arrow press to get rid of that too.

[depletedvespene]

On my ATARI 800XL, the top right 1U key was BREAK; the one to its left was BACKSPACE; the 1.5U R2 RETURN key was below — definitely not a good design (OTOH, I bet some people today would dig the R3 1.25U CAPS key and perhaps wonder if it could be moved to the R4 1.0U position below).

Now, Backspace, while in insertion mode, would erase the character to the left of the cursor and carry the rest of the line with it; but in overstrike mode, it would replace the character to the left of the cursor with a space and NOT carry the rest of the line with it. I got so used to that behaviour that to this day it's the one I prefer (to the point that when I chose a text editor to use on PCs, I went with Qedit because it was able to replicate this feature through an optional setting), even though I understand pretty much other editors use the "normal" behaviour and can use it without issue.

On the other hand (ok, on the SAME hand), SHIFT+BACKSPACE produced a DELETE command and it would always erase the character at the cursor's position and shift leftwards the rest of the line, independently of the insertion/ovstriking status (and even then, this didn't strike me as odd).

[samuelcable]

M/D/Y is the best date format, and I say that as someone who usually hates the "American" way of doing things (farhenheit, imperial)

[fohat]

Format YYYYMMDD or YYYY-MM-DD (including zeroes!) is a format that is most computer-friendly.

If you use it in lists or filenames, dates as characters and/or numbers are always recognized in the proper order.

[Findecanor]

Using / in date formats is confusing because there are several ways of ordering the numbers.
In the previous decade you could have dates like 05/07/04 ... and HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO READ THAT?!
ISO makes the ordering unambiguous.

BTW. The way I was taught when I was a kid was that the / in a date is read like "of". 07/08 means "the seventh day of the eight month", and there is no dash between that and the year.

[depletedvespene]

M/D/Y is the best date format, and I say that as someone who usually hates the "American" way of doing things (farhenheit, imperial)

"Unpopular" and "flat out wrong" sometimes do coincide, indeed.

[depletedvespene]

Using / in date formats is confusing because there are several ways of ordering the numbers.
In the previous decade you could have dates like 05/07/04 ... and HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO READ THAT?!

With derision, of course. That was supposed to be 05/07/2004.

ISO makes the ordering unambiguous.

So M/D/Y is ANSI date format now?

BTW. The way I was taught when I was a kid was that the / in a date is read like "of". 07/08 means "the seventh day of the eight month", and there is no dash between that and the year.

"Siete de agosto de 2019". Yup: 07/08/2019.

[Findecanor]

ISO makes the ordering unambiguous.

So M/D/Y is ANSI date format now?

Edit: Actually, the standard ANSI INCITS 30-1997 (R2008) mandates the same date format as ISO 8601.
It is apparently used by the US military ... sometimes. There are also databases that have "ANSI date" in the documentation for this date format.

[samuelcable]

M/D/Y is the best date format, and I say that as someone who usually hates the "American" way of doing things (farhenheit, imperial)

"Unpopular" and "flat out wrong" sometimes do coincide, indeed.

well now that i consider it, in terms of priority of how often things are changed, id say that dd/mm/yyyy may be better since you change each value in order of how often it is changed. i may be conditioned by where i live but the year being the first number is just wrong to me, im not a programmer so i cant go off that

[mr_a500]

Format YYYYMMDD or YYYY-MM-DD (including zeroes!) is a format that is most computer-friendly.

If you use it in lists or filenames, dates as characters and/or numbers are always recognized in the proper order.

Yes. YYYY-MM-DD is (or was) the official Canadian date format, but years of computers defaulting to inferior American format has caused most Canadians to just go with that. NOT ME! I'll use YYYY-MM-DD until the day I die!

Also, I hate any date format that doesn't use a 4-digit year!

[Polecat]

M/D/Y is the best date format, and I say that as someone who usually hates the "American" way of doing things (farhenheit, imperial)

"Best" in what sense, exactly? In American English it's customary to say, for example, "April first, nineteen ninety nine." So I would write "April 1, 1999, or 4/1/99" when writing it informally to be read as text. In a more formal context, especially for an audience that includes folks from other backgrounds, I would probably write 1 April 1999.

For dating files or database entries I would certainly want them to sort in chronological order, so that changes things completely. Prior to Y2K it would have been 99/4/1, but now we need four digits for it to be meaningful: 1999/4/1.

Trying to reduce this to a single right or wrong answer makes no sense at all to me, but what do I know? This is the internet, after all.

[snacksthecat]

My unpopular opinions thread was better

[depletedvespene]

My unpopular opinions thread was better

Says you.

[depletedvespene]

Format YYYYMMDD or YYYY-MM-DD (including zeroes!) is a format that is most computer-friendly.

If you use it in lists or filenames, dates as characters and/or numbers are always recognized in the proper order.

Yes. YYYY-MM-DD is (or was) the official Canadian date format, but years of computers defaulting to inferior American format has caused most Canadians to just go with that. NOT ME! I'll use YYYY-MM-DD until the day I die!

Also, I hate any date format that doesn't use a 4-digit year!

Amateur. You'll suffer, SUFFER, when Y10K arrives.

[fohat]

but now we need four digits zeroes for it to be meaningful: 1999/ 04 / 01.

Fixed that for you.