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[Liam Proven]

On 8 April 2013 20:28, William Scott Lockwood III <vladinator at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Apr 8, 2013 2:25 PM, "Liam Proven" <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 8 April 2013 20:13, James Freer <jessejazza3.uk at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Liam thanks - where did you find out about ctrl-A
>> Sorry, I omitted to answer your actual question.
>> It is a standard CUA keystroke to select all. Works in most apps on
>> most OSs. Selecting text to quote expands the "[...]" thing, so I
>> stumbled across it by trial and error.
>
> Part of the old LIM standard from the 80's if memory serves. LIM was the
> first attempt I know of to get OS's and applications on the same page for
> various things. That way, you could know a common set of keys and expect
> them to work the same from application to application. Things like F1 always
> being 'help' and the like.

Sir is muddling Sir's TLAs up, I fear.

LIM was the spec for Expanded RAM on MS-DOS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanded_memory

CUA - Common User Access - is part of the IBM SAA standard for look &
feel in DOS (and Windows, OS/2, Mac etc.) apps:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_User_Access

I believe Ctrl-A was part of CUA, but then, I think a fair few CUA
keystrokes were actually lifted from Mac OS.

But you're right - it does date back to the DOS era of the 1980s.

(Which means it is mostly forgotten today. Here in the UK, former
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher just died. She was a major figure in
the 1980s - the UK's first female PM, the woman that got the UK into
the war with Argentina, broke up the unions, destroyed the UK's heavy
manufacturing industry & whose limitations on the welfare state forced
millions into poverty. And yet, Twitter & Facebook are full of
20-somethings who don't know who she was...
http://whoismargaretthatcher.tumblr.com/ )

Disclaimer: I wrote most of those Wikipedia articles. :¬)

--
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