Message Box, multiple lines

[Richard Gaskin]

Jerry Muelver wrote:
> I see. Well, in 24 years of computing, I've never, until the G3, even 
> SEEN a keyboard with both Enter and Return keys. The distinction must be 
> a "Mac" thing.

It's a bit older than that, for those of us who remember typewriters. :)

The Return key was labeled as such more than a century ago, a reference 
to the paper carriage returning to the left side of the typewriter so 
the writer can begin a new line.

The Enter key is a new construct introduced with computers.  It's placed 
away from the traditional keys, down by the numeric keypad with the 
other recent keyboard additions unique to computing.

Each key generates a different key code.

So these keys are not the same, neither in their origin nor their 
current resulting key code.

Yet PC manufacturers label these two different keys as if they are the same.

Why make one thing and label it something else?

Beats me.

All I know is that it's been this way for so long among PC manufacturers 
that many application designers have had to treat both Return and Enter 
as snynomous in terms of user gestures.

But as Jacque pointed out, this isn't always the case.  Some use Enter 
for entering (confirming) input, while reserving Return for advancing to 
the next line.

What the software designer does with these keys will depend on the 
context in which they're used.

As far as Rev goes, as long as the keyboard generates different codes 
for each key it seems reasonable to maintain a distinction between them 
in Transcript's messages.  If the software designer wants to treat them 
as synonymous they're only three lines away from doing so:

on returnKey
   enterKey
end returnKey


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  Richard Gaskin
  Managing Editor, revJournal
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