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Comment by layer8

1 day ago

Decades ago, Return and Enter were two different keys for that reason: Return to insert a line break, Enter to submit your input.

Given the reduction to a single key, the traditional GUI rule is that Enter in a multiline/multi-paragraph input doesn’t submit like it does in other contexts, but inserts a line break (or paragraph break), while Ctrl+Enter submits.

Chat apps, where single-paragraph content is the typical case, tend to reverse this. Good apps make this configurable.

24 comments

layer8

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jeberle  1 day ago

Before that, page-mode terminals used <Return> to move to first field on a subsequent line (like a line-based <Tab>) and sent the page only on <Enter> or <Fn-key>. This made for quick navigation w/ zero ambiguity.

iambateman  13 hours ago

Microsoft teams: not as bad as people say, except for this situation.

I have accidentally sent so many messages trying to get to a new line.

  • fireflash38  3 hours ago

    It's because enter does different things at different times in the exact same text box.

    Write a code snippet/block text. Does [enter] insert a newline, exit the block, or send the message?

    What about in a bulleted or numbered list?

    And my 2 biggest pet peeves with MS Teams:

    1. trying to edit the first letter in a `preformat block`. It's not possible. It will either exit the block or go to the second letter.

    2. Consistency with bold/italics. Bold a selection of text. Then backspace once. Are you going to write bold or normal? What does ctrl-B do? Anytime you backspace into a bolded section, it will convert your editing back to bold, and you cannot disable bold.

  • oneeyedpigeon  6 hours ago

    I also sent a LOT of Slack messages prematurely for the same reason. Used to it now, though. The more an interface emphasises the single-line nature of a text input, the better. Multi-line should never submit on enter, single-line always should.

    • thinkharderdev  5 hours ago

      Same, but it's configurable in slack so now I have it configured the Enter inserts a line break and Cmd+Enter submits the message

  • baud147258  5 hours ago

    while I haven't changed it, it seems that you configure that behavior in the current version of Teams (Settings > Chats and channels)

irishcoffee  1 day ago

Carriage return and line feed go way back. Tty stands for teletype. A computer was the job description of a person.

It’s turtles all the way down.

  • falcor84  15 hours ago

    What lower turtles were there? My impression was that teletypes were the first proper keyboard-based interfaces.

    • Someone  4 hours ago

      > My impression was that teletypes were the first proper keyboard-based interfaces.

      They (about) were, AFAIK, but using them with computers wasn’t their first usage.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleprinter:

      “A teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is an electromechanical device used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels

      […]

      Initially, from 1887 at the earliest, teleprinters were used in telegraphy. Electrical telegraphy had been developed decades earlier in the late 1830s and 1840s, then using simpler Morse key equipment and telegraph operators

      […]

      With the development of early computers in the 1950s, teleprinters were adapted to allow typed data to be sent to a computer”

      Even for that, there was prior art. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_telegraph, which used a piano-style keyboard.

      The Linotype also is quite old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linotype_machine:

      “The Linotype machine operator types text on a 90-character keyboard.

      […]

      In July, 1886, the first commercially used Linotype was installed in the printing office of the New York Tribune.”

    • smokel  9 hours ago

      Mechanical typewriters have different physical mechanisms to feed forward a line or make the carriage return. I think it doesn't turtle much further back than that.

      1 reply →

cratermoon  21 hours ago

don't get me started on backspace vs delete...