Lower and Upper case keyboard letters

[rgaiacs]

In https://github.com/swcarpentry/git-novice/pull/570, @M4rkD changed

To get out of the pager, press <kbd>Q</kbd>.

to

To get out of the pager, press <kbd>q</kbd>.

because on her words

N searches in reverse when using less, this brings up the confusing message that no matches are found (unless the user has already previously pressed n). The key for searching forward is lowercase n.

She is right about the different behaviour of lower and upper case "n" but the change impact our lesson style guide. When I wrote our recommendation, I intended that we would use <kbd>Q</kbd> when pressing the key "q" on the keyboard and use <kbd>Shift</kbd>+<kbd>Q</kbd> when we need the shift key, e.g. for a upper case "q". This is to be compatible with the use of other keys, e.g. Alt and Ctrl. What are your impressions?

[munkm]

I'm the maintainer who merged this PR; and I've reverted it in accordance with the style guide. That said, I hadn't read the style guide in a while, so I forgot this rule. I will say that I personally understand why it would be confusing to always use capitals here, especially for somebody new to the lessons. Perhaps we could add a note to the instructor notes or some other extras place that somehow clarifies that all of our keyboard instructions are reflections of the keyboard buttons being pushed; i.e. <kbd>Q</kbd> really means the Q keyboard key and not capital Q. I think it's unrealistic to expect that new instructors are going to read the style guide, and paging already can be confusing to learners, so it'd be nice to make this information accessible to them.

[markgdawson]

Personally, my first assumption when I see an upper case character by itself would be that it refers to the upper case character. Having said that, as programmers, it's probably quite normal for us to pay more attention than the average human to character case!

I can see the reasoning here, i.e. if we write simply "Q", for sure some of the class will assume the character "q" and some will assume "shift + q".

My vote would be to avoid ambiguity when possible, and teach people to care about Q vs q. The only unambiguous convention I can see is to use "q" and "shift + q" for q and Q respectively. That way nobody gets confused. But, I appreciate that this is a more extensive change.....

[gcapes]

The only unambiguous convention I can see is to use"q" and "shift + q" for q and Q respectively

The letters of the keyboard are always(?) shown as capitals on the keys themselves, so I'm afraid I don't think that suggestion is unambiguous either.

[rgaiacs]

I noticed that GIMP and other programs always use uppercase letters.

GIMP

Chrome

[bencomp]

I noticed a similar discussion in https://github.com/swcarpentry/shell-novice/issues/1334 recently.

[gcapes]

I think the style guide follows an established convention - see Rainere's comment, and the confusion only affect a minority of learners.