
The Lost Key of QWERTY (2016) - bryanrasmussen
http://widespacer.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-lost-key-of-qwerty.html
======
Illniyar
Not really related but do we really need 4 different unicode symbols for the
same glyph? It's not even like it represents different things - whats the
difference between a tricolon and triple colon or the difference between a
vertical ellipsis and a presentation form of vertical horizontal ellipsis
(which is really a vertical ellipsis described with twice as many words?)

"

    
    
        ⁝ - U+205D tricolon
    
        ⋮ - U+22EE vertical ellipsis 
       
        ⫶ - U+2AF6 triple colon operator  
      
        ︙- U+FE19 presentation form for vertical horizontal ellipsis    

"

~~~
goto11
Unicode encodes symbols rather than glyphs. That is why there are different
code points for say latin o and greek omicron even though they look the same.
It also distinguishes between punctuation symbols and mathematical operators,
like between dash and minus, even though they look similar.

As for the "presentation forms" they are not semantically different and are
mostly a compatibility thing:

 _A: Presentation forms are ligatures or glyph variants that are normally not
encoded but are forms that show up during presentation of text, normally
selected automatically by the layout software. A typical example are the
positional forms for Arabic letters. These don 't need to be encoded, because
the layout software determines the correct form from context.

For historical reasons, a substantial number of presentation forms were
encoded in Unicode as compatibility characters, because legacy software or
data included them._

Unicode FAQ,
[https://unicode.org/faq/ligature_digraph.html#Pf1](https://unicode.org/faq/ligature_digraph.html#Pf1)

~~~
nyuszika7h
And yet, they do not have a mathematical italic "h" letter, using the
reasoning that the Planck constant (ℎ) already exists. But this character
looks out of place compared to the rest of the italic letters in many fonts.

~~~
K0SM0S
Oh thank you for pointing that out! There is also a lack of indices and
exponents, among the most importants (can't remember but letters like i, x or
n).

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
You need a font that supports those and superscript-x is a modifier, rather
than a subscript, but:

    
    
      aⁱ U+0271 Superscript Latin Small Letter I
      aˣ U+02e3 Modifier Letter Small X
      aⁿ U+207f Superscript Latin Small Letter N
      aᵢ U+1d62 Latin Subscript Latin Small Letter I 
      aₓ U+2093 Latin Subscript Latin Small Letter X
      aₙ U+2099 Latin Subscript Latin Small Letter N
    

I use DejaVu Sans Mono that is free and has some coverage, though it's missing
the most inopportune ones.

But you're right that there are many missing, either from the sub- and
supescript ranges or from modifiers (or both).

Edit: there's a page on wikipedia with a very complete list of unicode sub-
and super-scripts _and other characters that can be used as such_:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_subscripts_and_supersc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_subscripts_and_superscripts)

But, again, you need the right fonts.

~~~
K0SM0S
I'm pretty sure I hadn't found some of these last I tried...

Thank you SO MUCH!

------
coldtea
> _Our mystery symbol was clearly intended to be typed, however the person
> transcribing incoming telegrams could just make a new paragraph on receipt
> of that code, rather than typing a special character. There appears to be no
> reason to ever put the symbol on paper._

Err, typing the symbol to separate paragraphs instead of adding a new
paragraph would save space (and also paper) though...

~~~
cryptonector
Didn't telegraphs use paper _tape_ in the beginning? If so, then the only way
to signal line/paragraph breaks would be symbolically. Of course, a typewriter
wouldn't have needed that, but as TFA shows, it came in handy in some cases
anyways.

~~~
reaperducer
_Didn 't telegraphs use paper tape in the beginning?_

Not just in the beginning. Almost until the end. The paper tape with the
actual messages was cut into strips and pasted onto a telegram form before
being put into an envelope and delivered.

~~~
cryptonector
All the more reason, then, to have a line-/paragraph-breaking glyph!

~~~
reaperducer
No, that's not how it worked. The messages weren't arranged in paragraphs.
They were snipped to fit inside the pre-printed box on the telegraph form.

And even very rich people didn't send multi-paragraph telegrams. You paid by
the letter. Most telegrams were two sentences or less. Sometimes two words or
fewer.

~~~
cryptonector
Mark Twain famously sent a one-character telegram to his agent: ?

And the agent famously responded: !

The real question was "how's the new book doing?".

~~~
yesenadam
I always heard it was Victor Hugo and Les Miserables–indeed it's mentioned
("apocryphal tale") on Hugo's wikipedia page...with a link to this page saying
it most probably never happened. Also I came across it as an Oscar Wilde story
online just now.

[https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/06/14/exclamation/](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/06/14/exclamation/)

~~~
cryptonector
Fascinating. Three different apocryphal versions of the same story.

EDIT: Searching, I only find the versions about Wilde and Hugo, so it may be
just that I misremembered it.

------
hotwire
...it doesn't just open up the Options menu?

~~~
lone_haxx0r
No, there were touch gestures for that.

------
larusso
It amazes me how much we still know from say 1000 years ago and how little we
sometimes know about things just shy of 150 years.

~~~
jobigoud
It could also imply we don't really know most of the mundane details and
intricacies of past cultures. Tricks and techniques lost to time forever. Like
the difference between the many small things you experience when you are
traveling somewhere compared to what's left in the pictures.

~~~
reaperducer
Not so much "lost to time forever" as "locked away in physical media that
makes them hard to access."

We talk a lot about the seemingly infinite storage capabilities we have today,
but all it takes is one terrorist attack, or one major SV company to go out of
business and suddenly there's a massive hole in our cultural memory that
cannot be recovered because everything we have is stored magnetically.

~~~
WorldMaker
There's also the "never written about because every one knew" common knowledge
problem. It was a boring thing everyone knew, so why would they write about
it?

------
Svip
Just speculating here, but it could also be plausible that one of Sholes'
investors was a biographer, who wanted that kind of symbol on the typewriter.
But given the success of the typewriter, by the second version, Sholes
abandoned it, because the demand for a slash symbol far outweighed the demand
for the dotted line.

------
mmjaa
In my highschool typing classes, 40 years ago, I remember seeing this symbol
used to indicate omitted paragraphs ... in the same way that the ... is used
to indicate a pause between sentences, the vertical version indicates a pause
between paragraphs.

.

.

.

Like this.

But .. I can't seem to find online examples. Its a terrifically difficult
character to search for ..

~~~
_4570
That symbol is called an ellipsis when used to indicate a pause -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsis)

If you search by this term you can get unicode characters for both the
horizontal and vertical versions.

------
Nition
Great research by the author of this article.

~~~
jansan
When it comes to keyboards, Marcin Wichary will not leave a single stone
unturned.

------
jacquesm
I remember old terminals showing | as two separate segments with a space in
the middle.

~~~
kbaker
This had its own discussion a little while ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20627274](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20627274)

~~~
jacquesm
Oh interesting, totally missed that one.

------
diggernet
⋮

~~~
asplake
Spoiler: an early example of the hamburger menu

~~~
nkrisc
We call it the "kabob" menu. If it's sideways, it's "ants on a log"

------
fireattack
Can someone explain to me why that original source needs "an alternate set of
line breaks"?

Why one set (vertical bar) is not enough?

~~~
Nition
It seems like the original blog post got it wrong there. See the comment by
"godspace"[1] and the link they provided[2]. The | indicates a line break but
the ︙ indicates a logo.

[1] [http://widespacer.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-lost-key-of-
qwert...](http://widespacer.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-lost-key-of-
qwerty.html?showComment=1554335976506#c3476949469900396758)

[2]
[https://www.newspapers.com/image/39396241/?fcfToken=eyJhbGci...](https://www.newspapers.com/image/39396241/?fcfToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJmcmVlLXZpZXctaWQiOjM5Mzk2MjQxLCJpYXQiOjE1NzI5OTIxMDUsImV4cCI6MTU3MzA3ODUwNX0.ciGwsNCtCt7S5jeWf_lFmHOwnVOL3bldbQLwdkRW62Y)

------
russellbeattie
I like the idea it could have been used for borders.

    
    
        ..............................
        ⋮                             ⋮
        ⋮.............................⋮
    

Seems plausible.

~~~
OskarS
It's a really rather advanced use of typography (making borders) for such a
simple machine that didn't even have parentheses. But yeah, it's plausible,
and I like the authors theory that it was intended to be a vertical bar, but
it was replaced with three dots to avoid confusing it with I and 1.

~~~
russellbeattie
The author suggested the borders idea as well. I didn't come up with it, I
just illustrated it.

------
teddyh
Clickbait title rescue: It’s the ⁝ - U+205D tricolon character, present on the
drawing accompanying the original patent for the QWERTY-layout typewriter. Its
actual use is obscure, and still unknown, although theories abound.

~~~
Dylan16807
I don't think it's clickbait. Sure, you can tell me it's some weird character
I've never heard of. But I already knew that from the title! Failing to use
the name of something in a title, when basically nobody knows that name, is
not a bad thing.

~~~
teddyh
The title could have been “The lost ⁝⃣ Key of QWERTY”. Or even “The Lost
‘vertical dots’ Key of QWERTY”. To needlessly omit crucial information from
the headline is clickbait.

------
jobigoud
From the title I thought this would be about the fact that the QWERTY keyboard
has 104 keys vs 105 for the AZERTY keyboard (used in France and other
countries in Europe). QWERTY has a really wide SHIFT key at the bottom left,
whereas AZERTY has an extra key there.

~~~
kuroikyu
If you're going to list facts, at least get them right. The version that
Europe uses is also called QWERTY. The US uses the ANSI variant of the QWERTY
layout while the "European" variant is called ISO. One of the differences
between the two versions is indeed the left shift being longer or shorter to
accommodate the extra key but it's not the only one.

AZERTY (a variation of the ISO QWERTY, with 105 keys, the big enter, etc) is
used in France like you say but nowhere else. The rest of Europe use other
layouts within the ISO QWERTY. Here you'll find Spanish, UK, Italian,
Norwegian, and many other layouts that move and add the necessary symbols for
their languages.

edit: corrected right to left, stupid me. I didn't express myself correctly
when talking about AZERTY. It is used in a few other places besides France.
What I meant is to say that is not Europe's standard as the parent comment
seemed to indicate.

~~~
benibela
My keyboard is AYERTZ, but perhaps I just put the keys at the wrong place
after cleaning

~~~
kuroikyu
Did I say no other layouts exist outside of AZERTY and QWERTY? I was pointing
out that the assertion that the parent comment made about AZERTY = Europe and
QWERTY = US was wrong.

~~~
thanatropism
Doesn't Germany use QWERTZ?

~~~
zaarn
QWERTZ largely maps to QWERTY with exception of special characters and Z/Y
being swapped. QWERTZ can be bought in ISO or ANSI, though ANSI QWERTZ is hard
to get from any sane manufacturer since everyone here likes DIN/ISO.

