Keyboard keys, commands, shortcuts, "accelerators"

[Drew Scott Daniels <umdanie8@cc.UManitoba.CA>]

Bug #192305 has some interesting discussion about the history of different
keyboard keys, commands and shortcuts. I made the mistake of suggesting
other possible keys... q for quit and b for going back (usually k pages,
where k usually defaults to 1) are in lynx, less, more and likely many other
programs.

ctrl-ins and shift-ins have been around for a while... Perhaps longer than
ctrl-v? It probably varies from the dos/windows world to the unix world.

Escape has an interesting history, starting with it's use for
communications on terminals. This key was apparently been overloaded to
mean cancel in many programs.

The function keys F1 to F12 have interesting histories too. I seem to
recall that F11 and F12 are just modified versions of F1 and F2... F3 in
particular has meant a few different "standard" things inducing end, find
and open?

There is now also the term "accelerators" which is often used for keyboard
commands that are listed on GUI menus. I think this is the same kind of
thing but with a newer name.

     Drew Daniels