Why There is 12 Function key on Key board? [modified]

[JimmyRopes]

John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:

I personally think the keys should start at F0 instead of F1.

It does F0 is Esc. :-D

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[OriginalGriff]

And so it was with the original IBM XT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ibm_px_xt_color.jpg[^] 83 keys, 10 of them function keys.

Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together. Manfred R. Bihy: "Looks as if OP is learning resistant."

[Peter Mulholland]

John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:

apprently

:snigger: function is one of those words that I frequently swap the n and the c when typing altho, I can't remember doing it recently.

Pete

[Peter Mulholland]

So that begs the question: Why does zero come after 9 on the keyboard instead of before 1?

Pete

[Chris Meech]

Before there were PCs with keyboards, there were video terminals with keyboards. A lot of them that I remember had function keys on them. Most of the early VT, Wyse and even IBM terminals that I used to work with invariably had at least 10 function keys on them. :)

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[Lost User]

The XT keyboard had 10 since that was all there was roomm for but most terminals had 12 because they had room so the AT keyboard ended up with 12 as well.

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[realJSOP]

I hate the keyboard I use at work. :/

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[Gregory Gadow]

Peter Mulholland wrote:

Why does zero come after 9 on the keyboard instead of before 1?

That is actually pretty easy. The earliest typewriters lacked the 1 and 0 keys: typists would use a capital I or a lower case l for 1, and a capital O for 0. This was done to minimize material and production costs, and because the glyphs could easily be made using existing keys and so were considered redundant. There was no exclamation point, either: that was made with a three key combination of single quote, backspace, period. A key for zero started to become common in the 60s. Rather than force millions of typists to relearn their trade, the zero was placed above the O, which is how it came to be at the end of the list. The one key did not become common until the mid 70s; there was much variation with what Shift-1 would be, with the backtick, twiddle and exclamation point being used on different models. Eventually, the exclamation point became standard.

[Dan Neely]

All modern architectures are both. MMX, SSE, on die GPU (especially with openCL) are CISC type features. Die sizes got big enough to have the best of both worlds.

3x12=36 2x12=24 1x12=12 0x12=18

[PIEBALDconsult]

I don't. I don't know what it's for.

[PIEBALDconsult]

Oh, yeah, I recall that there was a function key arrangement of two columns of five keys to the left of the main keypad... where's a picture? Ah, here[^] we go.