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What's A 'Scroll Lock' And Why Is It On My Keyboard?

Posted by timothy on from the mysteries-of-the-ancients dept.

Jeff Bauer writes "Today's article in The Straight Dope explains all the weird keys that come with standard PC keyboards. Now if someone could just explain what the 'Alt Graph' key does on my Sun keyboard, enlightement would be at hand ..."

5 of 866 comments (clear)

  1. scroll lock by hookedup · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Every keyboard has it, somewhere on the upper right-hand side, and frankly, it's pretty useless. It was included on the original IBM PC (where it also had little point). Nowadays, Excel is about the only app that takes advantage of it. When you engage Scroll Lock and press an arrow key, the active cell remains where it was and the entire spreadsheet moves (without Scroll Lock, the active-cell indicator moves to the next cell). article here

  2. Re:An old one by zerocool^ · · Score: 0, Redundant

    now, *that's* funny.

    I commend you sir. Mod up?

    --
    sig?
  3. Scroll lock. by Stonent1 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Go ahead and redundant me for it, but open up an excel spreadsheet and press scroll lock and move around with the arrow keys and then take it off and try again.

  4. Not really by phorm · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Since I can map a function to CTRL+ESC, but it is not activated by the windows key without special codes to interpret it. Ditto for the rest of these functions.

    Windows key and CTRL+Esc etc do perform the same functions in windows, but one is not necessarily calling the other

    I believe you can map for these keys in nix though?

  5. but by commodoresloat · · Score: 0, Redundant

    how many buttons are necessary?