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   David Nash (dpnash@c.im)'s status on Saturday, 01-Mar-2025 14:04:26 JST David Nash

   • Quenby

   @Quenby

   Centering “This is my title”:

   (Loud *shtunk* sound)
   (Think “T,h”)
   (backspace)
   (Think “i,s”)
   (backspace)
   (Think “Space,i”)
   (backspace) …

   Yeah, I’m oldish, at least. But could be a lot older. This was in the early 1980s, probably one of the last 4 or 5 typing classes at my middle school that used actual typewriters.

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     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: (lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me)'s status on Saturday, 01-Mar-2025 14:10:39 JST Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:

     in reply to

     • Quenby
     @dpnash @Quenby Huh, how would that center the title?
     It more reminds me of how *roff does bold by repeating the character (like T ⌫ T for a bold T).
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     David Nash (dpnash@c.im)'s status on Saturday, 01-Mar-2025 14:32:56 JST David Nash

     in reply to

     • Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:
     • Quenby

     @lanodan @Quenby The first (loud THUNK) sound was hitting either a dedicated “center” key or a tab stop set to the center. (It was over 40 years ago; I’m genuinely uncertain of the exact mechanism, but whatever it was, it THUNKed the typewriter carriage to exact center.) Then, backspacing once per two characters in the title offset the carriage to the correct position to begin typing the title and have it centered (+/- one character, at most).

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     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: (lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me)'s status on Saturday, 01-Mar-2025 14:34:46 JST Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:

     in reply to

     • Quenby
     @dpnash @Quenby Oooh, that makes sense, didn't know some would have such a useful key, at least I don't think the ones I used (mostly for fun) had it.
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     David Nash (dpnash@c.im)'s status on Saturday, 01-Mar-2025 14:38:47 JST David Nash

     in reply to

     • Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:
     • Quenby

     @lanodan @Quenby The more I think about it, the more likely it seems that it was just a plain old TAB keystroke after setting a single tab stop at exact center, rather than a dedicated key. (These were the last generation of boringly mass-produced office electric typewriters, before the short-lived partly computerized ones, and they tended to have the bare minimum to get the job done.) Still, that bit of memory got de-indexed long ago and I don’t really know for sure.

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     clew (clew@ecoevo.social)'s status on Sunday, 02-Mar-2025 14:20:12 JST clew

     in reply to

     • Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:
     • Quenby

     I remember setting TAB stops physically — they were little metal tabs between the case and the carriage, you slid them left one at a time to where you wanted them, the TAB key slipped a detent and sprang to the next one.

     Tables were an unbelievable hassle.

     @lanodan @dpnash @Quenby

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