Editing 1806: Borrow Your Laptop
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==Explanation== | ==Explanation== | ||
− | [[White Hat]] asks to borrow [[Cueball|Cueball's]] laptop to | + | {{incomplete|Randall is NOT Cueball (see discussion)! There also has been some debate as to what should be in the comic explanation. So far most comments votes for keeping as it is. See discussion.}} |
+ | [[White Hat]] asks to borrow [[Cueball|Cueball's]] laptop to load something. Cueball permits this, but immediately begins rattling off a list of very unusual key- and mouse-bindings that he has applied to the device. In the caption, [[Randall]] states that he himself tends to continually re-configure computers that he owns in weird ways, eventually rendering it unusable (or at least unpleasant to use) for everyone else. | ||
− | Of the three items in Cueball's list of customizations only the first and half of the second seems like a real and relevant | + | Like many other computer users Randall likes to customize his PC. Of the three items in Cueball's list of customizations only the first and half of the second change seems like a real and relevant change. In the first he has programmed the computer so hitting both shift keys simultaneously will change the keyboard back to QWERTY. The {{w|QWERTY}} keyboard is the standard in the US (as well as some other places using the roman alphabet). It has been a recurrent theme for Randall to refer to the {{w|Dvorak Simplified Keyboard|Dvorak}} keyboard layout, and, although he doesn't say so, it seems safe to assume that this is the current setting, as it is one of the most common QWERTY competitors, and has been repeatedly mentioned in the comic. Supporters claim that typing speed is faster on a Dvorak keyboard, although this is still contentious, and this is a reason Randall often makes jokes about it. (See more details [[:Category:Dvorak|here]]). The laptop has most likely a standard QWERTY keyboard, but if Cueball can type blindly in Dvorak he would not be troubled by the fact that the keys typed a different letter than what is on the keyboard's key. This relation was also the pun in the recent comic [[1787: Voice Commands]]. The same problem would arise if the computer is set to another language than what the keyboard was meant for, which often happens in countries where the second language is English. |
− | + | The first part of the second point on the list makes, as Cueball has changed his keyboard layout so that {{w|capslock}} acts as the {{w|control key}}. Swapping capslock and control is a common thing to do in the world of Unix or for users of [https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/MovingTheCtrlKey the Emacs editor]; the "Caps Lock" key (immediately to the left of the "A" in a traditional layout) is much easier to reach for a touch typist than the more out-of-the-way "Ctrl", and the latter is often used more frequently, especially by programmers. | |
− | + | But the second part where Cueball says he has then moved capslock so that it is activated when hitting the {{w|spacebar}} makes no sense. Moving the capslock function to the space bar is quite impractical, as the spacebar is the largest key, and one which would likely not normally be used for anything other than spaces, making accidental application of caps lock more likely. Most people do not use capslock enough to justify giving it the largest key on the board, as whichever key Randall now chooses for space will be harder to reach, making him more likely to make mistakes in typing, such as pressing a letter key, or tab, or alt, for example, when trying to type a space. What's worse, he doesn't tell White Hat where he has hidden the space bar, although it could of course be the two ctrl keys, as ctrl is now on capslock. This would at least give him two possible (but much smaller) space keys to use, one on either side of the keyboard. | |
− | + | People have more reason to change their keyboard layouts on laptops, due to the reduced keyboard, which can leave vital keys out, especially if it was bought in a foreign keyboard layout. Rather than change the keyboard layout all the time in order to access keys which are not accessible in one of the layouts, one can take advantage of text substitution and keyboard remapping programs to set shortcuts for keys they use often. | |
− | Finally Cueball goes out on a limb with an impossible setting, which is that his | + | Finally Cueball goes out on a limb with an impossible setting, which is that his scroll wheel moves through time instead of through "space" (as in up and down on the screen), but only when using {{w|Touchpad#Operation_and_function|two-finger scroll}}, which often used on {{w|Touchpad|touchpads}}/track pads for laptops as a gesture for scrolling. Time travel is also a [[:Category:Time travel|recurrent theme]] on xkcd. Quite likely Randall has chosen this example because of the inconsistency of some systems interpreting two-finger scrolling opposite of others (two-finger scrolling in the up-direction on some systems moves the content up, on others down). This is often configurable, but is further complicated by the fact that "inverted scrolling" is used in opposite meanings on different systems. |
− | Finally it becomes clear these three settings are not the only important | + | Finally it becomes clear these three settings are not the only important points, as Cueball's list continues with at least one other point which he doesn't get to finish in the comic. |
− | In the title text | + | In the title text it is revealed that Cueball actually did not mean moving in real time, in the sense of time travel, but rather that the two-finger scroll would act as an {{w|undo|undo/redo}} button. This would represent a form of metaphorical "time travel" by using "undo" to recover a past state of the currently open file and "redo" to go to a later (but no later than the present) point in time. Scrolling rapidly up and down would let the user rapidly build and unbuild whatever they were making, potentially a cool visual (see also [https://youtu.be/ZIqWPohGmmM time lapse art]). In the title text Randall says that he would actually find such a feature cool, but that he doesn't think that the programs on his laptop could keep up if his scroll wheel was mapped to send a stream of undo/redo commands to them as he used it. It would also interfere with the normal use of the scroll key for scrolling or zooming. |
− | + | A day later, [http://www.reddit.com/user/ncsuwolf /u/ncsuwolf on reddit] [http://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/5xi92h/a_scroll_wheel_mapped_to_send_a_stream_undo_and/ suggested] a way to make the undo-redo-scrolling work in emacs using undo-tree. It uses shift-scrolling to avoid conflicts with normal scrolling. | |
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==Transcript== | ==Transcript== | ||
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:[Caption below the panel:] | :[Caption below the panel:] | ||
:Once I've used a computer for a while, no one else will ever use it again. | :Once I've used a computer for a while, no one else will ever use it again. | ||
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{{comic discussion}} | {{comic discussion}} |