Talk:2583: Chorded Keyboard

Why is it H+<Left> rather than H+<Right>? JohnHawkinson (talk) 03:22, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Probably for the rhyme with "Shift" in the previous verse. In terms of practicality, though, I agree — <Right> would make more sense for a real keychord. 108.162.246.154 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

A pity Shift and Left don't rhyme very well. But then neither do Chord and Word. 172.70.85.79 03:41, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

It works if you're from New Zealand. 162.158.111.16 10:37, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Wow, I totally missed that near rhyme. It's not quite so bad if you sing it, though. JohnHawkinson (talk) 03:46, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Eh, Tom Lehrer's certainly done much worse slant rhymes. -- KarMann (talk) 03:55, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Sadly, too, there was the opportunity for "The other hand, hits H and lift." Alas. JohnHawkinson (talk) 04:23, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

I don't know about other people, but I can reach H+<Left> on my keyboard with the index finger and pinky of my right hand, but H+<Right> requires thumb and pinky and doing something terribly awkward with my wrist. 172.70.110.161 06:51, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

I added some (necessary?) additional contextualising of how it mirrors the original song, consider it a bridge/middle-eight, so that those who still don't quite get that bit of popular culture get a bit more of the idea than before.

In the process I made an executive decision to comment about the rhyming (or not) along the way.

...but I strayed into 'Cueball's Computer Problems' territory, and then noticed (sorry, missed it before diving in) that it's mentioned again (but chronologically before!) at the the end of the explanation. I'm not quite sure how to remove the redundancy. The lyrical trailing-off really needs to mention this, I feel, but removing repetitions from the other person's text will need extra thought too. If someone gets in there before I do and modifies either/both of the sections nicely then that'll be Ok, but I'll try to revisit it myself (and 'kill my darlings' if necessary) if nobody else sees fit to in my stead. 172.70.86.22 19:02, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

presumably he programmed his keyboard to use chord-logic for ALL common words.... if he has ctrl, alt, shift, and at least two special function keys, such as win and alt-gr.... that's 2^5=32 possible signal combinations from function keys. if he uses the 8 direction keys on the numeric keypad, that's 32*8= 256 possibilities for command modifiers to each letter. So, in theory, he could program in an unique combination of key strokes that chooses between the 256 most common words that begin with each letter, totaling 6656 possible words that can by typed using chording.

The combination that results in "hallelujah" just happens to be ctrl-shift-h-left. hopefully there's a graphical prompt which shows you the 8 possible current words to choose from, given the most recent combination of function keys and a given letter.

I happen to know that if you're typing in Japanese phonetic letters using MS Word, there are actually so many homonym words which have different logographic symbols, and different meanings, but which all SOUND the same, and thus are phonetically TYPED the same, that's it actually NORMAL for Word to list a pop-up context menu with the top-8 word choices you might have just meant to enter, and require you to select one before continuing. and then it swaps out the correct logograph symbol for the phonetic symbols you just typed. I don't think it uses the numpad directional arrows to make the choice, but honestly, it would be a lot more user-friendly if it did.... 162.158.74.170 05:38, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Is it steganography? 108.162.237.41 04:03, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Stenography* 198.41.242.239 19:09, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Ironically, having considerable knowledge of one of those covers of the song can lead to more confusion than less familiarity with any of them. My wife was recently moderately obsessed with Rufus Wainwright, including his cover of 'Hallelujah'. So when I read this comic, I didn't catch on until most of the way through what other Randall was up to. But when she read it, she caught on in the first line, and yet, didn't get the title text at all until I explained it to her (having compared some versions overnight before then), since that line isn't included in Rufus' version. No particular point here, just, well, 'Talk'. -- KarMann (talk) 01:55, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Has anyone recorded a cover with these lyrics yet? I had kind of assumed that would happen soon after this was posted. --Sensorfire (talk) 04:14, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Control Shift H

https://defkey.com/what-means/ctrl-shift-h shows the shortcut action in 113 programs. (Who knew there was a website devoted to keyboard shortcuts?) In Firefox, it shows your history as soon has you hit the H. (I like to think that Randall uses good ol' open source Firefox.) Your history will show the current XKCD page first, of course, but that listing does not include the word "HALLELUJAH." The next keydown is interpreted as a separate keystroke. Nothing interesting happens with the 8 permutations of Ctrl-Shift (up or down) and (left arrow, numpad left, left tab, backspace). I was kinda hoping that Mozilla had secretly conspired to tweak this keystroke combination in the last update. In short, I have nothing to add to the explanation, but not for lack of trying. 108.162.219.187 23:52, 19 February 2022 (UTC) (This is my first explainxkcd comment. I'll properly sign up before I comment again.)

We can add a javascript snippet that captures this keychord and shows "Hallelujah" on this website, right :P 172.70.188.81 04:46, 20 February 2022 (UTC)