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From: guy%gorodish@Sun.COM (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.terminals
Subject: Re: function keys vs. control keys
Message-ID: <22007@sun.uucp>
Date: Wed, 24-Jun-87 17:30:31 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.22007
Posted: Wed Jun 24 17:30:31 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 26-Jun-87 06:06:13 EDT
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> I disagree.  The placement (and number!) of function keys varies far too much
> from terminal to terminal for a programmer and user to agree on how to make
> best use of them....
> Now if you're damning your software to one particular kind of terminal then I
> guess you afford to use every misbegotten key the terminal manufacturer
> decided to put on the terminal.  Otherwise you're better off using
> control-sequences.

Well, that depends.  The issue was whether control keys or function
keys provide a better user interface.  Under many circumstances, a
user will be using the same type of keyboard most of the time; for
some users, under these circumstances some users may be more
productive using function keys than control keys.

If you have an editor that permits you to bind various character
sequences to functions, you can set up key maps that permit you to
use function keys *without* having to hardcode knowledge of these
function keys into the editor.

Again, absent any evidence that the vast majority of people work
"better" (for some definition of "better") with control-character
commands than with function-key commands *in their native
environment* (i.e., assuming that everybody will have to work with
many different kinds of keyboards is right out; that assumption is
simply not valid), the blanket statement that "control characters are
better than function keys" is simply not true.

If you have a very wide range of terminals, in a situation where
users won't be able to use the same sort of keyboard most of the time
(e.g., if you have a public terminal room with a wide variety of
terminals, and no private terminals), control keys may be better
because "learning" the function keys helps only when you are typing
at a particular terminal, and that only happens a small fraction of
the time.

If you have a private terminal with a reasonable function-key layout,
and you have a tendency not to move your pinky in time, so that ^X-n
becomes ^X-^N often enough that it gets in your way, and you're
reasonably proficient at learning how to find the function keys
without looking, function keys may be better than control keys
because you make fewer errors.
	Guy Harris
	{ihnp4, decvax, seismo, decwrl, ...}!sun!guy
	guy@sun.com