{"id":176,"date":"2006-01-10T22:00:25","date_gmt":"2006-01-10T11:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/2006\/01\/10\/rational-1000-lord-of-the-clipboard-rings-2\/"},"modified":"2006-01-10T22:02:12","modified_gmt":"2006-01-10T11:02:12","slug":"rational-1000-lord-of-the-clipboard-rings-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/2006\/01\/10\/rational-1000-lord-of-the-clipboard-rings-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Rational 1000: Lord of the Clipboard Rings"},"content":{"rendered":"
This is one of a short series<\/a> of nostalgic reminiscences about the Rational 1000.<\/div>\n

What do you call the snippets of text that you put on a clipboard? Rational called them \u00e2\u20ac\u0153regions\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, and labeled the Home key as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Region\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for manipulating them. The key sequence Region \u00e2\u2020\u201c<\/code> pushed a region onto the clipboard \u00e2\u20ac\u201c kind of equivalent to CTRL+C in Windows.<\/p>\n

The difference was it was pushed onto a Region \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ring\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, that you could step through (Region \u00e2\u2020\u0090<\/code> and Region \u00e2\u2020\u2019<\/code>). So much more powerful than a single clipboard, and so much less clumsy than Microsoft Office\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clipboard. You could even delete from the Ring with Region Backspace<\/code>.)<\/p>\n

Regions weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the only thing that had their own ring. You could store the current cursor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s position in its own ring (with the same set of commands, except using the Bookmark<\/code> button rather than the region button.<\/p>\n

Rational only supported vertically cascaded windows, but the windows layout was also stored in a ring, so you could jump from a layout suitable for coding, to a layout suitable for debugging in a flash. There was no \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Windows Layout\u00e2\u20ac\u009d button \u00e2\u20ac\u201c they used ALT+CTRL+SHIFT+\u00e2\u2020\u201c<\/code> to store, and ALT+CTRL+SHIFT+\u00e2\u2020\u0090<\/code> or ALT+CTRL+\u00e2\u2020\u2019<\/code> to move between them.<\/p>\n

\n

Actually, that led to an embarrassing moment once: I heard a question over the cubicle: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Julian, what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the combination to delete a windows layout from the ring?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hmm.. I have never tried, but logically it would be ALT+CTRL+SHIFT+BACKSPACE<\/code>\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Three seconds later I heard a yelp and my parentage being called into question. It turns out that the IBM Xterm we used considered SHIFT+BACKSPACE<\/code> to be equivalent to DEL<\/code>. That made ALT+CTRL+SHIFT+BACKSPACE<\/code> equivalent to the better known command: CTRL+ALT+DEL<\/code>! The Xterm rebooted, losing all connections.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I still miss the control that was given by these rings. <\/p>\n

    \n
  • I could work through one piece of code, snaffling up useful snippets, and then rapidly produce similar code, pasting the correct pieces on demand.<\/li>\n
  • I could hop back and forth between the specification, the code and its output in a flash. Not just the right file, but the right place in the file.<\/li>\n
  • I could change my entire layout as I changed modes of operation with one keyboard combo.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Where are these operations today?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The Rational 1000 supplied a level of control over the clipboard, cursor position and windows layout that I still miss today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23,25,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-based-on-a-true-story","category-insufficiently-advanced-technology","category-rat1000"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}