alexpank Posted May 19, 2004 Report Share Posted May 19, 2004 This is just something that I have occasionally wondered about ever since I first started doing stuff with computers, but never thought to ask... What does the scroll lock key actually do? I've tried turning it on and off, and nothing seems change. Like I said in the topic description, it's nothing that I'm going to lose sleep over, I was just curious. While I'm about it, what do Pause/Break and Print screen/Sys Rq do? Again, I've never found them to do much (at least, not the Pause and Sys rq bits). If anyone's bored enough to help me out with this, I'd be eternally grateful. Well, for the next five minutes, at least Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VeeDubb Posted May 19, 2004 Report Share Posted May 19, 2004 Pause and Print screen worked in the old dos days. You could, in most apps, and the console, hit print screen, and a lovely dot matrix printout would roll out of you epson tracktor feed dot matrix printer. Pause/break, same deal. You could use it to pause most running processes and you could use ctrl-break to kill a runnaway task in the dos console the way you can kill a process with ctrl-c in a linux console. Honestly, I've used computers since I was 6 or 8 (DOS3 or so) and I've never found any use for scroll lock. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexpank Posted May 19, 2004 Author Report Share Posted May 19, 2004 Hmm, I think Print screen might still work in Windoze. I've never tried it there, cos I rarely need a screenshot for anything. Didn't know about Pause/Break, though. I always just used Ctrl-C if anything got out of hand :) Maybe scroll lock's just there because it looks nice... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexpank Posted May 19, 2004 Author Report Share Posted May 19, 2004 The main intent of the Scroll Lock key was to allow scrolling of screen text up, down and presumably sideways using the arrow keys in the days before large displays and graphical scroll bars. You can see where this might have been handy in the DOS era, when screen output typically was limited to 80 characters wide by 25 rows deep. For some types of programs, spreadsheets being the obvious example, it's still handy now. In Microsoft Excel, Scroll Lock allows you to scroll a spreadsheet with the arrow keys without moving the active cell pointer from the currently highlighted cell. In Quattro Pro, another spreadsheet program, Scroll Lock works in a similar manner, although in contrast to Excel it's not possible to scroll the active cell pointer completely off the screen. Other programs use Scroll Lock for special functions. It's said (although I haven't personally verified this) that the Linux operating system as well as some early mainframe and minicomputer terminals employed Scroll Lock to stop text from scrolling on your screen in command-line sessions – pausing the scrolling, in effect. Straight Dope Staff Report I'm curious about that part about Linux... I might have to "personally verify" that when i get home... alex @ you can never have enough random bits of info... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aperahama Posted May 19, 2004 Report Share Posted May 19, 2004 I've used Pause/Break at boot up, you can pause the bios start to read whats on the screen ans esc to restart it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexpank Posted May 20, 2004 Author Report Share Posted May 20, 2004 Wow, I didn't know that. I check it out last night in Konsole, and it seems that it doesn't do nothin' for scrolling in that, but if you have it on, it will hide all of your typing until you release it. What the...? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.