Re: Backspace and delete
On Tue, 9 Dec 1997, Ian Jackson wrote:
[snip]
> Christian, I think we have rough consensus that my proposal should be
> implemented. If you agree you should say so, and then we can (a) file
> bug reports against packages which do not conform and (b) put it in
> the policy manual.
I must admit that I don't know enough about the details of keyboard
configuration to be able to judge your proposal. However, I trust you and
the others here that it will help regarding our "consistent keyboard
configuration" goal.
If attached your initial proposal below. Please check if this is the
correct proposal and if it's complete.
If someone still doesn't agree, please speak up NOW so that we can discuss
the technical details once more.
I plan to include this proposal for approval in the next "policy weekly"
posting, hopefully released in the next few days. (That's necessary so
that the people on debian-devel have a chance to object, too.) After that,
you can go ahead and file bug reports.
(Backspace acts like Delete in "pine" on my hamm systems; I really like to
have this fixed :-)
Thanks for preparing this proposal,
Chris
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What we want is:
* `<--' always deletes the character to the left of the cursor.
* `Delete' always deletes to the right.
* `Control'+`H' produces help in Emacs, as before.
We want this to be true for the console, for X, and even if you use
rlogin or telnet to get from one system to another.
What we should do is the following:
* `<--' generates KB_Backspace in X.
* `Delete' generates KB_Delete in X.
* X translations are set up to make KB_Backspace generate ASCII DEL.
* X translations are set up to make KB_Delete generate ESC [ 3 ~
(this is the vt220 escape code for the `delete character' key).
* stty erase ^?
* The `xterm' terminfo entry should have ESC [ 3 ~ for kdch1, just
like TERM=linux and TERM=vt220.
* Emacs is programmed to map KB_Backspace or the `stty erase'
character to delete-backward-char, and KB_Delete or kdch1 to
delete-forward-char, and ^H to help as always.
* Other applications use the `stty erase' character and kdch1 for the
two delete keys, with ASCII DEL being `delete previous character'
and kdch1 being `delete character under cursor'.
This will solve the problem except for:
* Some terminals have a `<--' key that cannot be made to produce
anything except ^H. On these terminals Emacs help will be
unavailable (assuming that the `stty erase' character takes
precedence in Emacs, and has been set correctly).
* Some other operating systems do incompatible things. We can change
the behaviour of their X clients via the same X resources that we
use to do it for our own; telnet and rlogin propagate some of this
information too.
----------cut-here--------------
-- Christian Schwarz
schwarz@monet.m.isar.de, schwarz@schwarz-online.com,
Debian has a logo! schwarz@debian.org, schwarz@mathematik.tu-muenchen.de
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