A look back: WordPerfect on DOS (2023)

An interesting thing about WordPerfect was that most of the keyboard shortcuts were built around the row of function keys at the top of the keyboard, so they were difficult to remember, compared to modern keyboard shortcuts. For this reason, nearly every WordPerfect user I knew had a little piece of plastic or laminated paper that they placed above the row of function keys that listed all of the keyboard shortcuts on it to help them remember.

The function keys were no more difficult to use than any other key shortcut. However since keyboards had that space they put the chart there and so could find the less commonly used commands. Everyone quickly learned which key was save, but there were many many others that they didn't use and so they didn't know - but if they wanted it they could look at the chart and find it.

GUIs are more discoverable (when done well), but DOS didn't really have a GUI option, so this was a second best. VI and emacs users sometimes print shortcut charts as well.

> function keys were no more difficult to use than any other key shortcut

That's a bold statement. I think most users would disagree, and the voted with their feet/fingers, and UI designers seem to agree.

Why? Some guesses: Nothing about F# indicates what it does, making it hard to learn; ctrl+S makes sense. And after you learn it, few can touch type function keys which means, 1) you have to look away from the document and, 2) there's much less muscle memory involved.

Using F-keys for the most shortcuts was standard across DOS apps. As far as discoverability, the common UI pattern was to show a single row of function key labels on the bottom of the screen (and update it when the user pressed and held Shift/Ctrl/Alt to allow for combinations), often with an option in settings to hide it once the user has gotten accustomed to the shortcuts.

I don't recall any issues touch typing F-keys, either, especially on typical keyboards from that era which had the entire row split into groups of 4, making it easy to find the right key without ever looking.

I'm not sure what you mean by "much less muscle memory involved" wrt F-keys. I still, to this day, have muscle memory of F2=save from using Norton/Midnight Commander so much.