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.

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

^H^H^H^H^?^?^?

That evil laughter from a disobedient tty. :(

not just that ... plenty of web apps (and maybe desktop native ones too, though I don't notice it as much there) use "smart-delete" - if the cursor has a character after it, the delete key deletes it, but if not, it operates like backspace (which ought to be labelled "delete prev").

I haven’t happened to have seen that - which web apps do it?

Hmm, at this point I think I might be imagining it ... I'll let you know if I can find it ...

Some older Apple keyboards had their backspace button labelled “delete” which to me made it sound like that was the “del” button and not the backspace button.

That was the convention on many older computing platforms.

A "Backspace" key on a typewriter did not actually delete: It merely moved the typing position back one space.

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.

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

The telegraph was keybased - only one key so I can't call it a keyboard, but in other ways it is what you are asking about.

Pianos have keys. And some telegraphs were outfitted with piano-like keyboards with one key per letter. Wikipedia has some pictures in the printing telegraph article [1]. So there is arguably a clear lineage from pianos to the modern computer keyboard.

Pianos however don't really have a concept of advancing the line or sending a recorded message.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_telegraph

player pianos existed with the concept of advancing are recorded messages. I forgot about them until you metioned them. The music box goes way back

Now I am searching to see if there were models of player pianos intended to punch tape.

I have never really thought about it but a player piano sort of implies it can only play the roll. If pressed I would guess that player piano rolls were cut by hand. I mean, I am sure they had tools to help them and probably fully automatic duplication machines. but did anyone play the piano to get a piano roll? or was it more like transcribing sheet music?

here were pianos that could punch a roll, but they were rare - AFAIK there were one offs that the company who made rolls used. The better rolls labels "as played by [someone famous in 1920]" were played on such a system. Once in a while those rolls were used directly in a performance, but the most common use was an expert would use that as the master and then correct all the errors because the transcription system wasn't very accurate (I'm not sure in what way, only that the companies always had an editor make adjustments before selling those roll)

Some of them are on exhibit in a museum - but with a sign saying something like "this will never be restored because it exposes the user to poisonous mercury." If you want to know more join the Musical Box society (I'm a member), or one of the other international clubs for people who collect this type of thing (I know of several but since I'm not a member I can't remember the full name)

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.

Well around the time of the first typewriters (late 19th century) there where mechanical typesetters, automating the laborious task of typesetting for the printing press. Of course the mechanics of printing where different but as far as I know this is the source of the "keyboard with buttons" type interface for producing literature.

> 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.”

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.

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.

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

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

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.

I have a very small Kevin Bacon number to the "guy who runs Teams". The message from them is "please use the built-in feedback tool to tell us about these things".