The Knight keyboard, designed by Tom Knight, was used with the MIT-AI lab's bitmapped display system. [1] It was a precursor to the space-cadet keyboard and the later Symbolics keyboard.
The Knight keyboard is notable for its influence on Emacs keybindings, particularly for helping popularize the meta key, which originated with the Stanford keyboard. [2] The layout is also noteworthy: the meta key was outside the control key, which is opposite from the layout used on most modern keyboards, dating to the Model M IBM PC keyboard, which uses the Alt key instead, and places it inward to the control key. [3]
The editor war is the rivalry between users of the Emacs and vi text editors. The rivalry has become a lasting part of hacker culture and the free software community.
The keyboard for IBM PC-compatible computers is standardized. However, during the more than 30 years of PC architecture being frequently updated, many keyboard layout variations have been developed.
In computing, a modifier key is a special key on a computer keyboard that temporarily modifies the normal action of another key when pressed together. By themselves, modifier keys usually do nothing; that is, pressing any of the ⇧ Shift, Alt, or Ctrl keys alone does not (generally) trigger any action from the computer.
In computing, a Control keyCtrl is a modifier key which, when pressed in conjunction with another key, performs a special operation ; similar to the Shift key, the Control key rarely performs any function when pressed by itself. The Control key is located on or near the bottom left side of most keyboards, with many featuring an additional one at the bottom right.
In computing, a keyboard shortcut also known as hotkey is a series of one or several keys to quickly invoke a software program or perform a preprogrammed action. This action may be part of the standard functionality of the operating system or application program, or it may have been written by the user in a scripting language. Some integrated keyboards also include pointing devices; the definition of exactly what counts as a "key" sometimes differs.
The space-cadet keyboard is a keyboard designed by John L. Kulp in 1978 and used on Lisp machines at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which inspired several still-current jargon terms in the field of computer science and influenced the design of Emacs. It was inspired by the Knight keyboard, which was developed for the Knight TV system, used with MIT's Incompatible Timesharing System.
The Alt keyAlt on a computer keyboard is used to change (alternate) the function of other pressed keys. Thus, the Alt key is a modifier key, used in a similar fashion to the Shift key. For example, simply pressing A will type the letter 'a', but holding down the Alt key while pressing A will cause the computer to perform an Alt+A function, which varies from program to program. The international standard ISO/IEC 9995-2 calls it Alternate key. The key is located on either side of the space bar, but in non-US PC keyboard layouts, rather than a second Alt key, there is an 'Alt Gr' key to the right of the space bar. Both placements are in accordance with ISO/IEC 9995-2. With some keyboard mappings, the right Alt key can be reconfigured to function as an AltGr key although not engraved as such.
The Meta key is a modifier key on certain keyboards. It first appeared on the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL) keyboard in 1970.
Arrow keys or cursor movement keys are buttons on a computer keyboard that are either programmed or designated to move the cursor in a specified direction. The term "cursor movement key" is distinct from "arrow key" in that the former term may refer to any of various keys on a computer keyboard designated for cursor movement, whereas "arrow keys" generally refers to one of four specific keys, typically marked with arrows.
On computer keyboards, the enter key⌅ Enter and return key↵ Return are two closely related keys with overlapping and distinct functions dependent on operating system and application.
In user interface design, a mode is a distinct setting within a computer program or any physical machine interface, in which the same user input will produce perceived results different from those that it would in other settings. Modal interface components include the Caps lock and Insert keys on the standard computer keyboard, both of which typically put the user's typing into a different mode after being pressed, then return it to the regular mode after being re-pressed.
There are two major English language computer keyboard layouts, the United States layout and the United Kingdom layout defined in BS 4822. Both are QWERTY layouts. Users in the United States do not frequently need to make use of the £ (pound) and € (euro) currency symbols, which are common needs in the United Kingdom and Ireland, although the $ symbol is also provided as standard on UK and Irish keyboards. In other countries which predominantly use English as a common working language, such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, the US keyboard is commonly used.
In computing, a tiling window manager is a window manager with an organization of the screen into mutually non-overlapping frames, as opposed to the more common approach of coordinate-based stacking of overlapping objects (windows) that tries to fully emulate the desktop metaphor.
The Fn key, short form for function, is a modifier key on many keyboards, especially on laptops, used in a compact layout to combine keys which are usually kept separate. It is typically found on laptops due to their keyboard size restrictions. It is also found on many full-sized "multimedia" keyboards as the F-Lock key. It is mainly for the purpose of changing display or audio settings quickly, such as brightness, contrast, or volume, and is held down in conjunction with the appropriate key to change the settings.
In computing, a bucky bit is a bit in a binary representation of a character that is set by pressing on a keyboard modifier key other than the shift key.
Super key is an alternative name for the Windows key or Command key when using Linux or BSD operating systems or software.
Aquamacs is an Emacs text editor for macOS. It is based on GNU Emacs, currently tracking the GNU Emacs version 25.3 branch. Although GNU Emacs has had native UI support on macOS using the Cocoa API since version 23, Aquamacs modifies the user interface to conform with macOS standards in favor of Emacs standards.
Vimperator is a discontinued Firefox extension forked from the original Firefox extension version of Conkeror and designed to provide a more efficient user interface for keyboard-fluent users. The design is heavily inspired by the Vim text editor, and the authors try to maintain consistency with it wherever possible.
Emacs or EMACS is a family of text editors that are characterized by their extensibility. The manual for the most widely used variant, GNU Emacs, describes it as "the extensible, customizable, self-documenting, real-time display editor". Development of the first Emacs began in the mid-1970s, and work on its direct descendant, GNU Emacs, continues actively as of 2022.
A keyboard layout is any specific physical, visual or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key-meaning associations (respectively) of a computer keyboard, mobile phone, or other computer-controlled typographic keyboard.