Nav cluster
A nav cluster or sixkey is a cluster of keys for navigation and editing. It is located close to the Backspace and cursor keys on a standard keyboard.
| Insert | Home | Page Up |
| Delete | End | Page Down |
This layout was popularised by the IBM Enhanced Keyboard, but similar nav clusters have existed on earlier keyboards. Macintosh keyboards have a Help key or Fn key instead of an Insert key.
| Key name | Short name | Macintosh (US) | ISO/IEC symbol | USB | X11 | ANSI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Insert | Ins | ⎀ |
7:0x49 | 0xff63 (Insert) | CSI 2 ~ | |
| Delete | Del | ⌦ |
⌦ |
7:0x4c | 0xffff (Delete) | CSI 3 ~ |
| Home | Home | ↖ |
⇱ |
7:0x4a | 0xff50 (Home) | CSI H |
| End | End | ↘ |
⇲ |
7:0x4d | 0xff57 (End) | CSI F |
| Page Up | Pg Up | ⇞ |
⎗ |
7:0x4b | 0xff55 (Prior) | CSI 5 ~ |
| Page Down | Pg Dn | ⇟ |
⎘ |
7:0x4e | 0xff56 (Next) | CSI 6 ~ |
| Help | Help | help | 📖 |
7:0x75 | 0xff6a (Help) | |
| Undo | Undo | ⎌ |
7:0x7a | 0xff65 (Undo) |
There are also many regional symbol variations.
Contents
Usage
Delete key
The Delete key is used to delete the character to the right of the cursor. The cursor is stationary.
Insert key
In older programs, the Insert key is modal, swapping between overwrite mode and insert mode. In modern programs, insert mode is often the default or the only mode. Even though the key is used as a modal key, no modern keyboard protocol has support for a lock light. Mode is instead often indicated by the shape of the text cursor.
In some older programs such as in the MS DOS prompt in Microsoft Windows, Control+Insert is used to Copy and Shift+Insert is used to Paste. This is still commonly available on Linux and is still supported by some MacOS applications.
Home and End
When browsing a document, Home and End moves to the top and the bottom of the document, respectively. The typical usage for Home/End keys when editing text is to move the cursor to the beginning/end of the current line, but move to top/bottom if the Control key was held.
Text programs on Macintosh tend to use the browsing usages also in text editors and word-processing programs, moving the cursor to the first character or the last character in the text document.
Many vintage computer platforms such as Commodore 64 and Atari ST had only a Home key, moving the cursor to the top/left of the screen. Shift + Home was Clear, which also moved the cursor home.
Page up and Page Down
Page Up and Page Down moves one page's worth of text up and down respectively. Most programs for text editing or word processing move the cursor at well. Scrolling behaviour varies especially among text-mode programs.
In some programs the document can be moved without moving the cursor if the Alt or Control key is held down.
Help key
The Help key typically activates an on-screen user manual for the current window/program.
Undo key
The Undo key performed the Undo function in the current program.
Alternate clusters
Two columns
Some keyboards have a 2×3 arrangement to be able to save a column.
Many keyboards from Logitech and Microsoft have the following arrangement, most with the Insert key displaced elsewhere:
| Home | End |
| Del | Page Up |
| Page Dn |
The Cherry G80-5000 has the following layout. The key profile of top two rows is similar to G80-3000 and of the bottom (home) row as G80-11x00:
| Insert | Page Up |
| Delete | Page Down |
| Home | End |
Compact
Compact keyboards with separate nav clusters often omit keys from them.
| MagicForce 68 | Leopold | Matias | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Insert | Page Up |
Insert | Page Up | ||
| Delete | Page Down |
Delete | Page Down | ||
The 70% MagicForce 68 omits the Home/End keys. They are available on Fn + PgUp/PgDn.
The 65% Leopold FC660C (and the M variant) contain Insert/Delete, with the other keys on combination of the Fn and cursor keys.
Matias Mini Quiet Pro/Tactile Pro have only Page Up/Page Down in the nav cluster but the Delete key is alone above it. Home/End and Insert are available on those three keys together with the Fn key: Matias caters mostly to the Macintosh platform whereon the omitted keys are less useful.
Integrated
In some keyboards, there is no spacing between the navigation keys and other keys.
Single column
The de-facto standard for 65% and 75% form-factor keyboards is to have the nav keys in a single column fused together with other keys including the cursor keys. This order is sometimes broken.
| Standard | 65% alternative | "TrueFox" | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Back Space |
Home | Back Space |
~ ` |
~ ` |
⭐
| ||
| Page Up |
Delete | Back Space |
Delete | ||||
| Page Down |
Page Up |
Page Up | |||||
| ↑ | End | ↑ | Page Down |
↑ | Page Down | ||
| ↓ | → | ↓ | → | ↓ | → | ||
On 75% keyboards with the standard layout, the Delete key is often available on the function-key row or even on the bottom row.
Some 65% keyboards instead provide the Delete key on a similar position as on the standard 3×2 cluster. The key above it is then often the `~ key, displaced there by the Escape key which occupies the keyboard's top/left corner. The WhiteFox's Unix-inspired "TrueFox" layout has the Backspace and Delete keys on the same row, with the star-key above it intended to be programmed by the user.
Two columns
The Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Keyboard is a popular ergonomic keyboard with an uncommon integrated cluster:
| Back Space |
Delete | Home |
| End | ||
| Insert | Page Up | |
| ↑ | Page Down | |
| ← | ↓ | → |
No standard convention exists for 70% keyboards with a two-column integrated nav-cluster:
| UNIQEY C70 | Durgod×zFrontier ZF71 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Back Space |
Insert | Home | Back Space |
Insert | Home | |
| Delete | End | Delete | End | |||
| Code | Page Up |
Page Up |
Page Down | |||
| Fn | ↑ | Page Down |
↑ | Fn | ||
| ← | ↓ | → | ← | ↓ | → | |
The GMK/Uniqey C70 has a modified 3×2 cluster: the PgUp/PgDn keys have been moved down.
The Durgod×zFrontier ZF71's cluster is instead like the Cherry G80-5000 (above) but with Home/End and PgUp/PgDn pairs swapped.
Historic
DEC LK-201
IBM had copied the shape of the nav and cursor key clusters from the "Editing keys" on the DEC LK201 terminal keyboard.
| Find | Insert Here |
Re- move |
| Select | Prev Screen |
Next Screen |
Amiga
Amiga keyboards tended to have this two-key cluster above the cursor keys:
| Del | Help |
A form of Home, End, Page Up and Page Down usages were available on Shift+cursor. In text-editing programs the convention was to move the cursor to the window edge first, and scroll only if on the edge.
Atari ST
The Atari ST (and TT) line had a cluster with cursor and nav keys in one. A Delete key is instead in the main cluster, below Backspace and to the right of Return.
| Help | Undo | ||
| Insert | ↑ | Clr Home | |
| ← | ↓ | → | |
In arrow cluster
An arrangement sometimes seen before inverse-T cursor key arrangement became popular was to have arrows arranged in a cross with a key in the centre. This key was often the Home key.
| ↑ | ||
| ← | Home | → |
| ↓ |
Some keyboards (e.g. IBM "battleship" terminals) had this arrangement together with a 3×2 cluster above it.
