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Historically the Macintosh distinguished between Enter and Return. IIRC on the Lisa the Return key was on the main part of the keyboard and the Enter key was on the numeric keypad. In many apps they did the same thing, but I think in LisaCalc the Enter key would enter the contents of the selected cell and leave it selected. Return would do the same and then select the cell below. IIRC the Mac version of Microsoft Multiplan did the same.

On the MBP I'm typing this on, the key is labeled enter in small type and below that return in larger type. I think holding down the fn key and pressing that key does the enter action, while without fn it does the return action. I am pretty sure my full-size Mac keyboard has return on the main keyboard and enter on the numeric keypad. I think the Lisa was the same.

IIRC there was no Enter key on the original (128K) Mac keyboard, but the optional numeric keyboard had the Enter key.

Apple have an old user interface guideline that basically said that the main keyboard was for primarily typing text, while traditional data entry was secondary. Hence the function of the Return key was strictly to insert a carriage return into some text. And so no Enter or Control key on the original keyboard. As a kind of substitute Apple introduced the Command (Swedish campground) key, but it wasn't a direct mapping of Control. And IBM further muddied the waters by introducing CUA. By the time of the Mac II the default keyboard was much more compatible with common computers. It was a time of rapid change.



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