Re: [orca-list] Tips and tricks for Orca and Firefox

[Al Sten-Clanton <albert e sten_clanton verizon net>]

Thank you very much for all that.  There's a fair bit I didn't know.  
Into the late 1980s, I used that key often on a typewriter.


Al


On 8/16/20 3:27 PM, Andrew Hart via orca-list wrote:
> On 15/08/2020 13:55, Mewtamer via orca-list wrote:> While I'm familiar 
> with tabulation as a fancy term for adding things
> > up, especially in the context of summing a bill of order, and
> > tabulator is easily parsed as someone who does tabulation or a machine
> > designed for doing so, it never occurred to me that the tab key might
> > refer to tabulation, and honestly, that connection doesn't really
> > explain the key's name origin... never gave it much thought, but one
> > has to wonder why it isn't called the indent key since that was the
> > key's primary function prior to the advent of webpages and the primary
> > function of the character it generates when used for text input
> > instead of application control.
>
> To answer the question about how the tab key got its name:
> the Tab key is a key that was available on mechanical typewriter 
> keyboards long before modern computer keyboards were designed. It is 
> called the tab key because its primary function was to make it much 
> simpler to tabulate information on a typewriter, not merely to indent.
>
> Tabulate means  to arrange in tabular form. It also means to set out 
> in a list or to enumerate, which is the definition referred to above. 
> Tabulating (or tabulation) is not so much the action of summing up 
> accounts or items on a bill/invoice/etc.; rather it is the act of 
> listing itself, which also includes relevant totals presented in the 
> tabular form.
>
> The tab key gets its name from the first definition. Typewriters would 
> allow the typist to set tab stops at different positions on the line 
> and then to quickly advance the carriage to the next tab stop in 
> sequence from left to right, bi-passing the 
> keypress-ribbon-strike-carriage-advance mechanism.
> On computers, the Tab key normally assumes that tap stops are 
> regularly placed every 2, 4 or perhaps 8 characters, depending on the 
> context and the ASCII 9 code for Tab actually means move the print 
> head to the next tab stop and used to work on old dot matrix printers, 
> which, in the beginning,  were essentially electric typewriters 
> without a keyboard.
>
> Tabbing is not the same as as indenting, because you can tab after 
> typing text. Indenting means to offset the first word of a line from 
> the left margin. In contrast, many tables could start at the left 
> margin and the Tab key would be pressed to position the type head for 
> typing subsequent columns of information.
> Tabs are even used to format  console output by console application 
> and command-line utilities as the screen drivers know how to interpret 
> ASCII control codes.
>
> Of course, on a manual typewriter, it was common practice to set a tab 
> stop at column 6 and use the tab key to indent the first line of a new 
> paragraph (giving a 5-space paragraph indent). In this case,  the tab 
> and the indent are more or less the same thing, but to split hairs and 
> be technical, the tab is actually being used to make the indent.
>
> I hope I haven't bored you with this explanation.
>
> Hth.
> _______________________________________________
> orca-list mailing list
> orca-list gnome org
> https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/orca-list
> Orca wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Orca
> Orca documentation: https://help.gnome.org/users/orca/stable/
> GNOME Universal Access guide: 
> https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/a11y.html