Re: fixing backspace and delete

[Philip Hands <phil@hands.com>]

>    The latter has the advantage that it is possible to distinguish
> the key Ctrl-H (help in some applications) and the key Backspace
> ('delete a char left from the cursor' or 'page up'). Linux kernel
> use it by default (see /usr/src/linux/drivers/char/defkeymap.map).
> And also it looks better to have something like

Absolutely right.

Unfortunately, people seem to combine two issues into one, and then chaos 
breaks out:

  1)  What should the default mapping be, and how do we ensure that it applies
      by default in all environments (console, X, xterm, emacs shell etc. etc)

  2)  When someone remaps the keyboard, all applications should react in a way
      that allows the user to continue without noticing (except where the new
      mapping actually throws away information).

For 1) we must have a setup that allows applications to distinguish between a 
user pressing Ctrl+H and pressing [<---] because some applications take one to 
mean a request for help, and the other to be a request to Backspace.

The [<---] generates ASCII DEL mapping fits the bill for this, is possible 
to set up on just about every terminal in existance, and is already the Linux 
default.

Just because this is the default, does not eliminate the need to allow 
sysadmins to re-map their keyboards without breaking all their software.

For 2) applications need to take notice of stty and terminfo setting where 
appropriate, so that whatever the local sysadmin decides to map to the [<---] 
key, the user will see the application delete-left-character.  If this is not 
the case, the bug is in the application, not the keyboard mapping.

Cheers, Phil.



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