Nav cluster

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Revision as of 13:46, 25 May 2020 by Findecanor (talk | contribs) (Increased symbol sized. Emphasised Help and Undo keys. Fixed a flaw with paragraph within wrong section.)
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A nav cluster or sixkey is a cluster of keys for navigation and editing. It is located close to the Backspace and cursor keys on a standard keyboard.

Insert Home Page
Up
Delete End Page
Down

This layout was popularised by the IBM Enhanced Keyboard, but similar nav clusters have existed on earlier keyboards. Macintosh keyboards have a Help key or Fn key instead of an Insert key.

Key name Short name Macintosh (US) ISO/IEC symbol USB X11 ANSI
Insert Ins
7:0x49 0xff63 (Insert) CSI 2 ~
Delete Del
7:0x4c 0xffff (Delete) CSI 3 ~
Home Home
7:0x4a 0xff50 (Home) CSI H
End End
7:0x4d 0xff57 (End) CSI F
Page Up Pg Up
7:0x4b 0xff55 (Prior) CSI 5 ~
Page Down Pg Dn
7:0x4e 0xff56 (Next) CSI 6 ~
Help Help help
📖
7:0x75 0xff6a (Help)
Undo Undo
7:0x7a 0xff65 (Undo)

There are also many regional symbol variations.

Usage

Delete key

The Delete key is used to delete the character to the right of the cursor. The cursor is stationary.

Insert key

In older programs, the Insert key is modal, swapping between overwrite mode and insert mode. In modern programs, insert mode is often the default or the only mode. Even though the key is used as a modal key, no modern keyboard protocol has support for a lock light. Mode is instead often indicated by the shape of the text cursor.

In some older programs such as in the MS DOS prompt in Microsoft Windows, Control+Insert is used to Copy and Shift+Insert is used to Paste.

Home and End

When browsing a document, Home and End moves to the top and the bottom of the document, respectively. The typical usage for Home/End keys when editing text is to move the cursor to the beginning/end of the current line, but move to top/bottom if the Control key was held.

Text programs on Macintosh tend to use the browsing usages also in text editors and word-processing programs, moving the cursor to the first character or the last character in the text document.

Many vintage computer platforms such as Commodore 64 and Atari ST had only a Home key, moving the cursor to the top/left of the screen. Shift + Home was Clear, which also moved the cursor home.

Page up and Page Down

Page Up and Page Down moves one page's worth of text up and down respectively. Most programs for text editing or word processing move the cursor at well. Scrolling behaviour varies especially among text-mode programs.

In some programs the document can be moved without moving the cursor if the Alt or Control key is held down.

Help key

The Help key typically activates an on-screen user manual for the current window/program.

Undo key

The Undo key performed the Undo function in the current program.

Alternate clusters

Two columns

Some keyboards have a 2×3 arrangement to be able to save a column.

Many keyboards from Logitech and Microsoft have the following arrangement, most with the Insert key displaced elsewhere:

Home End
Del Page
Up
Page
Dn

The Cherry G80-5000 has the following layout. The key profile of top two rows is similar to G80-3000 and of the bottom (home) row as G80-11x00:

Insert Page
Up
Delete Page
Down
Home End

Compact

Compact keyboards with separate nav clusters often omit keys from them.

MagicForce 68 Leopold Matias
Insert Page
Up
Insert Page
Up
Delete Page
Down
Delete Page
Down

The 70% MagicForce 68 omits the Home/End keys. They are available on Fn + PgUp/PgDn.

The 65% Leopold FC660C (and the M variant) contain Insert/Delete, with the other keys on combination of the Fn and cursor keys.

Matias Mini Quiet Pro/Tactile Pro have only Page Up/Page Down in the nav cluster but the Delete key is alone above it. Home/End and Insert are available on those three keys together with the Fn key: Matias caters mostly to the Macintosh platform whereon the omitted keys are less useful.

Integrated

In some keyboards, there is no spacing between the navigation keys and other keys.

Single column

The de-facto standard for 65% and 75% form-factor keyboards is to have the nav keys in a single column fused together with other keys including the cursor keys. This order is sometimes broken.

Standard 65% alternative "TrueFox"
Back
Space
Home Back
Space
~

`
~

`
Page
Up
Delete Back
Space
Delete
Page
Down
Page
Up
Page
Up
End Page
Down
Page
Down

On 75% keyboards with the standard layout, the Delete key is often available on the function-key row or even on the bottom row.

Some 65% keyboards instead provide the Delete key on a similar position as on the standard 3×2 cluster. The key above it is then often the `~ key, displaced there by the Escape key which occupies the keyboard's top/left corner. The WhiteFox's Unix-inspired "TrueFox" layout has the Backspace and Delete keys on the same row, with the star-key above it intended to be programmed by the user.

Two columns

The Microsoft Sculpt is a popular ergonomic keyboard with an uncommon integrated cluster:

Back
Space
Delete Home
End
Insert Page
Up
Page
Down

No standard convention exists for 70% keyboards with a two-column integrated nav-cluster:

UNIQEY C70 Durgod×zFrontier ZF71
Back
Space
Insert Home Back
Space
Insert Home
Delete End Delete End
Code Page
Up
Page
Up
Page
Down
Fn Page
Down
Fn

The GMK/Uniqey C70 has a modified 3×2 cluster: the PgUp/PgDn keys have been moved down.

The Durgod×zFrontier ZF71's cluster is instead like the Cherry G80-5000 (above) but with Home/End and PgUp/PgDn pairs swapped.

Historic

DEC LK-201

IBM had copied the shape of the nav and cursor key clusters from the "Editing keys" on the DEC LK201 terminal keyboard.

Find Insert
Here
Re-
move
Select Prev
Screen
Next
Screen

Amiga

Amiga keyboards tended to have this two-key cluster above the cursor keys:

Del Help

A form of Home, End, Page Up and Page Down usages were available on Shift+cursor. In text-editing programs the convention was to move the cursor to the window edge first, and scroll only if on the edge.

Atari ST

The Atari ST (and TT) line had a cluster with cursor and nav keys in one. A Delete key is instead in the main cluster, below Backspace and to the right of Return.

Help Undo
Insert Clr
Home

In arrow cluster

An arrangement sometimes seen before inverse-T cursor key arrangement became popular was to have arrows arranged in a cross with a key in the centre. This key was often the Home key.

Home

Some keyboards (e.g. IBM "battleship" terminals) had this arrangement together with a 3×2 cluster above it.

See also