GoldenEye 007 Nintendo 64 Community, GoldenEye X, Nintendo 64 Games Discussion

[(Skorpion)]

(Asking about the purpose of the scroll lock key on keyboards.)

[radorn]

yes, that key is pretty much useless nowadays, but anyway, computer keys depend on the use they are given and that comes from the very desing (or lack there of) of the computer and its software, although, nowadays its just people using what was designed ages ago using keys as needed without much consistence.
I myself am constantly thinking (and seldom registering my ideas on a paper notebook) of how a computer and its interfaces should be, which, recently, has started to include the design of a keyboard, which, for now, puts the keys straight, and moves some stuff arround, although it is still qwerty (spanish version, mind you) because I don't have much of a clue about how to make a more efficient variation of it for spanish as there is dvorak for english, although many of the principles that apply to english dvorak would still apply to spanish as far as I can tell.

A key I haven't ever found myself using, like Scroll Lock (Bloq. Despl. for spanish) is Insert, but maybe I haven't used the correct type of application that uses it.
In some text input, it seems to modify the behavior or the cursor so that, if you place it BEFORE the text and start writting, you'll replace character by character what you find in front of the cursor with whatever you are typing. What is that good for?

[Dragonsbrethren]

radorn wrote:

In some text input, it seems to modify the behavior or the cursor so that, if you place it BEFORE the text and start writting, you'll replace character by character what you find in front of the cursor with whatever you are typing. What is that good for?

ROM hacking. If you're using a hex editor you most definitely do not want to insert characters, you want to overwrite instead, the insert key usually toggles between the two behaviors.

Scroll lock can be put to use in some games, I know you can map it to the run key in some games to make run into a toggle instead of having to hold it down all the time.

I personally find num lock pretty useless other than serving the same purpose as scroll lock, I learned to type on a keyboard without a number pad and have never been comfortable using one. I usually have it on anyway for anyone else who uses my keyboard. I hate programs that force you to use the number pad, luckily those are almost non-existent anymore.

The only use I know for pause/break is to pause Doom. For years I never even knew the game had an actual pause function, I just opened the menu.

[fantsu]

Pause/break.
If you don't play any PC games.

[The Extremist]

Yeah, Scroll Lock is pretty crappy...
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Pure hand-drawn goodness.

[GERage]

I've never used scroll lock or num lock for anything useful, but I have used pause/break in a few PC games.