Common Sense and Keyboard Nonsense, or, What Happens When You Press ESCape?
| Date | 01 April 1987 |
| Pages | 65-74 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb047709 |
| Published date | 01 April 1987 |
| Author | Walt Crawford |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Common Sense
and
Keyboard Nonsense, or,
What Happens When You Press ESCape?
Walt Crawford
If you use a personal computer, you
probably use more than one program and
you probably use some programs more
often than others. If your personal
computer is an IBM PC or compatible, you
have probably become confused when
starting to use a new program or one you
have not used recently. The author
completes a baker's dozen of "Common
Sense Personal Computing" articles with a
somewhat lighthearted look at a fairly
serious problem -- how programs frustrate
occasional users, make life interesting for
power users and trap unwary users of all
sorts.
He discusses odd and inconsistent
uses of keystrokes, overuse of function
and special keys, and problems in
identifying functions and keystrokes.
Crawford is principal analyst for special pro-
jects at The Research Libraries Group, Inc. This
is his thirteenth Common Sense Personal Computing
article for Library Hi Tech, and the first in a
short series on user interface issues in personal
computer software.
Assume for the moment that you know your
way around a personal computer. You have emerged
from the mud beneath the Lotus; you never go
wrong with PC-Write; you get dBest of dBase.
You are an old hand at using a number of programs;
you may even be a power user of several. Then
someone hands you a new program and suggests
that you give it a try. An hour later, you are
swearing at the computer you normally swear by,
and you're not sure why you are so upset. Most
likely, you have fallen prey to one or more problems
with the user interface, and specifically the use
of the keyboard -- or how the keyboard relates
to the screen.
All personal computers use the same primary
method of displaying information, the same method
of storing information for later use, and, with a
few exceptions, the same primary input device.
Every program displays information on a screen,
stores information on a disk or equivalent, and
(except for some graphics or game programs) gets
most user input from a keyboard.
That's about as far as the commonality goes.
The keyboard on a PC-DOS (IBM-compatible) com-
puter includes more than two dozen keys in addition
to the normal alphabetic keys, and each of those
keys can be used differently in different applications.
In some programs, the same keystroke can do
different things in different situations. Even use
of alphabetic keys may cause surprising results
in some cases.
THE USER INTERFACE
Keystrokes are part of the user interface
-- how you talk to the computer and how it responds
ISSUE 20 65
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