Pause / Break
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As the others have said it's a holdover from the olden days. I remapped it to toggle number pad mode on my laptop-like keyboard because I've remapped the numlock key to be the Home key. Actually I've remapped pretty much all the control type keys in a very geeky manner based on analyzing which keys I use most and where they are on the keyboard. When someone else tries to use my keyboard they tend to give up in frustration pretty quickly.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
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toxcct wrote:
Win+Pause opens the "System Properties" dialog
mmm... intuitive!
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I have this great key on on my keyboard. It sits way on the upper right. It says 'Pause/Break'. Does anybody know what its for?
I suppose the more interesting question is.. who's used it for its original purpose? I have. Golly gee, those were the days. Not. Oops.. no I haven't. I forgot the original use was for teletypes. I came onto the scene after it had been already remapped for use with modems -- pressing it would cause the sending modem to switch baud rates so you could see the characters instead of gibberish.
patbob
modified on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 11:51 AM
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Tim Schwallie wrote:
Does anybody know what its for?
Legacy from the days of DOS. Pause would pause the output to the console window (and still does) and Break would be like a Ctrl-C, which it still does in a console window. Marc
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I've been using this utility for years: http://www.randyrants.com/2006/07/sharpkeys_211.html[^] It's all ultimately done in the registry but the utility makes it easy.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
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patbob wrote:
Predates DOS by about a decade. At least.
What? There was life before DOS? Marc
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I have this great key on on my keyboard. It sits way on the upper right. It says 'Pause/Break'. Does anybody know what its for?
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I have this great key on on my keyboard. It sits way on the upper right. It says 'Pause/Break'. Does anybody know what its for?
It causes geeks to take a break from what they're doing and reminisce about days of yore, when the key was actually used for something. Personally, it (along with Ctrl) was perhaps the most common key combination I used during my gw-basic/QBasic programming days. It would interrupt the execution of a program so that you could do debugging stuff. Those were the days....
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I have this great key on on my keyboard. It sits way on the upper right. It says 'Pause/Break'. Does anybody know what its for?
Many games use that to pause the game and some debuggers and DOS programs respond to ctrl + Break (or ctrl + Break, Break).
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As the others have said it's a holdover from the olden days. I remapped it to toggle number pad mode on my laptop-like keyboard because I've remapped the numlock key to be the Home key. Actually I've remapped pretty much all the control type keys in a very geeky manner based on analyzing which keys I use most and where they are on the keyboard. When someone else tries to use my keyboard they tend to give up in frustration pretty quickly.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson
I'd hate your keyboard. How else am I supposed to pause fortran screen output without writing something in there? I'd never know how close to the convergence tolerance I am at any point in time with a specific solution. The key that I've forgotten about completely is SysRq. Not even a foggiest of notions of what it does anymore.
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I have this great key on on my keyboard. It sits way on the upper right. It says 'Pause/Break'. Does anybody know what its for?
The break key also comes in handy when you want to stop building your project/solution in Visual Studio. Just press CTRL+Break, and the build will stop. Sometimes a build may take too long, especially when there is also code analysis running. If you realize, you don't actually need to build, you can use this key combination to stop the build.
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I have this great key on on my keyboard. It sits way on the upper right. It says 'Pause/Break'. Does anybody know what its for?
This break key also comes in handy when you want to stop building your project/solution in Visual Studio. Just press CTRL+Break, and the build will stop. Sometimes a build may take too long, especially when there is also code analysis running. If you realize, you don't actually need to build, you can use this key combination to stop the build.
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I have this great key on on my keyboard. It sits way on the upper right. It says 'Pause/Break'. Does anybody know what its for?
I've mapped it to the Play / Pause command in Winamp.