"Insert" mode for text entry

[Tangled Up In Red]

As opposed to overwrite. Only here on SoSH, and I can't figure my way out.
I haven't experienced insert mode in over a decade. Is this the beginning (or middle) of my downfall?

 

[TomTerrific]

Jeebus, this is a blast from the past. Honestly I don't think I've used anything *but* insert mode for the last 20 years. Mostly due to the dumbing down of text editors, frankly. Oh, emacs.

Now that you mention it, I do see there is a way of invoking it in Word. Interesting. Can't help you with SoSH but I did learn something here.

 

[santadevil]

As opposed to overwrite. Only here on SoSH, and I can't figure my way out.
I haven't experienced insert mode in over a decade. Is this the beginning (or middle) of my downfall?

Phone? Computer? Both?
If it's computer, try a reboot

If it's a phone, wait for someone way smarter than me (pretty easy to find around here)

 

[SumnerH]

Insert mode has been the default for basically everything since the mid-1990s (Firefox doesn't even support overwrite/overtype mode unless something's changed in the past year). So I have no idea how you got anything to default to overwrite mode.

That said, have you tried hitting the Insert key to switch modes? That's maybe Function + Return on Mac or Search + . on Chromebook if your device has no insert key, but the Mac sequence varies by type of device so if you have one and Function-Return doesn't work and there's no Insert/Ins key then post specifically which variety you've got.

Jeebus, this is a blast from the past. Honestly I don't think I've used anything *but* insert mode for the last 20 years. Mostly due to the dumbing down of text editors, frankly. Oh, emacs.

Vim still has plenty of modes that I use all the time.

Now that you mention it, I do see there is a way of invoking it in Word. Interesting. Can't help you with SoSH but I did learn something here.

Word disabled overtype mode out of the box around 2005ish. You can turn it on with:
File -> Options -> Advanced -> “Use the Insert key to control overtype mode”, then the Insert key will work like it used to.

 

[Tangled Up In Red]

OK, I got this totally reversed. I was stuck in overwrite mode somehow.
This is on my windows laptop (useful information) but I don't seem to have an insert button on my keyboard.
However, @santadevil 's tech 101 recommendation of 'reboot computer' solved the issue.

Thanks, and I walk away with head hanging in shame.

 

[santadevil]

Woohoo, I helped!

 

[SumnerH]

Woohoo, I helped!

Qualified IT support technician!

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn2FB1P_Mn8&t=10s

 

[santadevil]

As the de facto IT person in my accounting firm (small firm majority owned by me), a lot of the issues that my staff comes for me to fix, is fixed by a reboot
At least now, after 14 years, some of them will tell me "I tried restarting before I came to bug you", so small progress at least

Most of the other issues are fairly easy for me to figure out
When they aren't, I can call our actual outside IT firm and they are awesome

 

[StupendousMan]

Vim still has plenty of modes

Vim FTW.

 

[allmanbro]

So, as a firm believer in insert, and a long skeptic of overstrike, I am curious where one would want overstrike. Especially in a setting like SOSH. Maybe I am just a bad writer or a writer with particular habits, so I spend a lot of time going back and adding a sentence in the middle of a paragraph, or adding a word in the middle of another sentence. And it I want to replace text, it's easier to delete than to figure what I type instead will be the same length. The vast majority of my writing is in paragraphs, in word processors or forums.

I know this is a question borne entire of ignorance . . . but . . . why overstike? Even though I have my view, this is not a rhetorical question, I'm genuinely curious what it is good for and what it allows you to do.

 

[StupendousMan]

This is not the answer that you -- or anyone else -- is seeking, but here's one example from the distant past. In the 1960s and 1970s, a computer programming language named APL chose to use mathematical operators for the bulk of its grammar. Not just simple signs such as "+" and "-", but a large number of symbols that were, well, rather strange. For example, one symbol was the Greek letter capital Delta, which could be created in many cases by pressing a single key. But there were also symbols which looked like the capital Delta with a vertical or horizontal line drawn through it. One way to input these symbols was to type the character for Delta, then backspace, and then type a second character for the vertical line, overstriking the Delta.

For a period of time, that was the preferred method of writing code in APL on many terminals ...

 

[Five Cent Head]

Here's a guess: back in the olden days (as my kids would say), computer memory was not fast, and a string of characters in a file was perhaps stored at a fixed location of memory. Inserting would require moving every single subsequent character one notch down the road (until someone decided to encode things as linked lists or whatever). Overwrite mode would change a single character in memory and so would be faster.

Also these days it's easy to select a bunch of text (and delete it), but before mice and GUIs, it was more clumsy.

This doesn't explain why you would want to use overstrike, but perhaps why it was an option and maybe at one point the default.