Keyboard key terminology

[Phil Bull]

Hi Matthew,

On Sun, 2008-04-13 at 08:52 +0100, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> Mac laptops have a Return key but not an Enter key.
> 
> All other laptops have an Enter key but not a Return key.
> 
> Mac desktop computers have both: Return in the keyboard's main section, 
> and Enter in its numeric keypad.
> 
> All other desktop computers have two Enter keys: one in the keyboard's 
> main section, and the other in its numeric keypad.
> 
> So in summary, it's much more common for a computer to have an Enter 
> key than to have a Return key. Calling it "Return" risks people being 
> unable to find the key at all. But calling it "Enter" risks people on 
> the Mac thinking that they have to go all the way over to the numeric 
> keypad, when they don't.

The second option seems more palatable to me. We could always put a note
somewhere in the docs mentioning the equivalence of the keys, perhaps in
basic-commands:

"After typing a command in the Terminal, press Enter to run it. If your
keyboard has a Return key, pressing that will have the same effect as
pressing Enter."

> I wonder if the help could use an &entity; that has a different value 
> depending on what hardware Ubuntu is running on.

It would be possible to use an entity, but that wouldn't work for people
browsing the documentation online and would require a patch to Yelp. As
such, I don't think it's worth the hassle.

Thanks,

Phil

-- 
Phil Bull
http://www.launchpad.net/people/philbull