IBM은 Microsoft가 Tab 키를 사용하여 대화 상자 필드 사이를 이동하는 것을 원하지 않았습니다.

I’ve written in the past about the cultural mismatch between Microsoft and IBM during the collaboration on OS/2, with the Microsofties viewing their IBM colleagues as mired in pointless bureaucracy and the IBM folks viewing Microsofties as undisciplined hackers.¹ One of many points of mismatch was the organizational structure. A colleague recalls that while he was assigned to the IBM offices in Boca Raton, Florida, there was a dispute over what key should be used to move from one field to another in dialog boxes. The folks at IBM were not happy with my colleague’s decision to use the TAB key, so they asked him to escalate the issue to his manager back in Redmond. My colleague’s manager replied, “The reason you are in Boca is to make these decisions so I don’t have to be in Boca.” My colleague rephrased this reply in a more corporate manner before passing it on to IBM: “Microsoft supports the use of the TAB key for this purpose.” Unsatisfied, the IBM folks escalated the issue up their organizational chain for several levels, and replied that their VP (who was around seven levels of management above the programmers) was absolutely opposed to the use of the TAB for this purpose, and they wanted confirmation from the equivalent-level manager at Microsoft that Microsoft stands by the choice of the TAB key. My colleague replied, “Bill Gates’s mother is not interested in the TAB key.” This apparently ended the discussion, and the TAB key stayed. Note: This upcoming Sunday is Mother’s Day in the United States. You probably shouldn’t ask her for her opinion on the TAB key. ¹ There was probably merit to both arguments. Wonderful story. It is hard to imagine something like this happening today. Was the key IBM wanted to use for dialog navigation lost in the depths of history? I’d like to know what it was, if only to appreciate what we escaped from. I wonder if it was a key associated with the terminals used for Mainframes. On the original 3270 keyboards, field navigation wasn’t done with a “Tab” key the way you’d think of it on a PC. The dedicated keys were called Field Forward (→|) and Field Backward (|←) — sometimes labeled as “Skip” — usually shown with arrow-and-bar symbols. The data-entry keyboard layout (modeled after IBM’s keypunch) had its own conventions inherited from card-punch operators, and there was no PC-style “Tab” key in the typewriter sense. This is absolutely hilarious. Thanks for sharing!