Innovator of Sticky Keys?

[Daniel Beardsmore]

According to a 1992 OmniKey manual, the OmniKey keyboards had Sticky Keys (actually referred to as such) implemented in hardware:

http://deskthority.net/wiki/File:Northg ... _Apr92.pdf

According to Wikipedia, it was added to Windows 95 by Microsoft — over three years later.

Did Microsoft get the idea from Northgate? Or does this go back further than Northgate?

(i.e. who was responsible for coming up with such a disgustingly-named idea? ^_^)

[HaaTa]

I'm more familiar with latch vs. lock comparison than the Sticky Keys term.

Not really sure where it originated. The XKB protocol spec uses Sticky Keys as the general behavior of a latched modifier. I'm also not sure when the feature was added to X Server (possibly as early as 1984).

http://www.x.org/releases/current/doc/l ... kblib.html
http://www.x.org/releases/current/doc/k ... proto.html

Now, thinking a bit harder. Doing escape sequences in a VT100 terminal is also like latching. But this isn't the same thing as sticky keys. (Ctrl+v, then Ctrl+m in vi during insert mode).

[Kurk]

The early BAT keyboard by Infogrip is from 1991, and it makes heavy use of the sticky key concept although it does not call them like that. For instance, pressing and releasing the blue thumb key activates a "sticky" shift so the next character is shifted. See this reference guide from 1991:
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/ ... 0Guide.pdf

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/ ... .aspx?id=3

[Findecanor]

I think that Edgar Matias (of Matias corp. behind Matias Tactile Pro) should know. He wrote a paper about what was developed into the "Matias Half-keyboard", and it uses sticky keys.

Also, his paper came up when I googled for "sticky keys site:microsoft.com".

Anyway, if the inventor of sticky keys got public about who he was, I think that he would get a lot of hate mail from annoyed Windows users ...

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Oh so you think whoever was responsible is hiding in shame? ;-)

[Matias]

Don't know who invented Sticky Keys but it's been around for a LONG time.