Backspace woes... (long)
Hi all -
I suspect that this topic has been breached (many times) before, but ...
With 2 new hamm installations (one on a Pentium, one on an Alpha), the
default backspace/delete configuration is annoying. At least it seems to
be consistant between the two machines... but consistantly annoying isn't
There are numberous bug reports in ncurses-base about backspace
problems, but they are all over 200 days old, and none of them seemed to
be resolved very well. And for that matter, I'm not convinced that the
problem is entirely in ncurses-base.
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Anyway, I ran some tests:
1) I ran a number of programs (emacs, info, less, ftp) in various
terminals (console, xterm (2x), kterm), and tested various key responses
( <--, Delete, ctrl-H, arrow keys, emacs keys). The results are quite
long, so I didn't want to post them here, but you can view them at
http://nakajima-www.cs.titech.ac.jp/~k-squire/bs.txt.
To put the results briefly, a number of terminals/programs do not seem
to conform to the Debian keyboard policy. In particular, kterm is quite
bad, in that it's impossible to backspace in certain situations with the
default keyboard mappings (all backspaces print ^H). Also, in an xterm,
at many prompts, <-- prints ^? instead of backspacing! This does not
happen, however, when the xterm is logged into another hamm machine.
2) I looked at stty settings for each terminal. These results I will
print here.
Console:
speed 38400 baud; line = 0;
flush = ^U;
-brkint ixoff -imaxbel
-iexten
xterm:
speed 9600 baud; line = 0;
erase = ^H; eol2 = ^O;
-brkint -imaxbel
xterm logged into an i386 from an alpha (both hamm):
speed 38400 baud; line = 0;
-brkint -imaxbel
kterm:
speed 9600 baud; line = 0;
eol2 = ^O;
-brkint -imaxbel
kterm logged into an i386 from an alpha (both hamm):
speed 38400 baud; line = 0;
-brkint -imaxbel
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Side note: in /usr/X11/Xresources
! Make the backspace key generate ^? instead of ^H, per Debian keyboard
! policy.
*VT100*backarrowKey: false
This was installed during the hamm upgrade. If I take it out (and ignore
Debian keyboard policy), things change in an xterm, though not everything
was fixed. Anyway, I assume it was put in there for a reason, so I don't
think it's a good idea to touch it.
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Fixes:
-----
In particular, if I execute 'stty erase "^?"' in a xterm, everything
begins to work fine (i.e. quite similarly to the console, which I think is
"correct").
Also, in a kterm, if I execute 'stty erase ^H', everything begins to work
again (though not in conformity with Debian keyboard policy).
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Questions:
---------
Okay. So I can fix the problems manually. My questions:
1) How do I fix it so that the "correct" key bindings are the system
default?
2) Why does xterm use the VT100 resources? Why doesn't kterm?
3) Why are the xterm/kterm stty settings different when logged into the
current machine verses when logged into a remote (hamm) machine.
4) Where do I send bug reports so that I don't have to fix these problems
in a default hamm system? I.e., where are the problems:
ncurses-base (terminfo entries), kterm, xterm, stty, less, ftp
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Sorry this is so long, but the last question is the most important to
me--if I knew the answer, I would have sent this information to the
correct place(s) first.
Any responses (other than, "gee, it works fine for me") would be
appreciated.
Thank you!
Kevin
-----
Kevin Squire
k-squire@cs.titech.ac.jp
Research Student
Nakajima Research Laboratory
Tokyo Institute of Technology
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