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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!math.ohio-state.edu!jussieu.fr!univ-lyon1.fr!univ-bpclermont.fr!llaic!espel From: espel@llaic.univ-bpclermont.fr (Roger Espel Llima) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Backspace = ^H Date: 27 Mar 1997 13:33:57 GMT Organization: LLAIC, Univ. Clermont-Ferrand 1, France Lines: 41 Message-ID: <5hdt05$9q2@cicsun.univ-bpclermont.fr> References: <5h2c01$4i2@reader.seed.net.tw> <5h8905$lj1@ui-gate.utell.co.uk> <87g1xkqe8d.fsf@erlenstar.demon.co.uk> <5h9m3l$1ih@gurney.zeta.org.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: llaic.univ-bpclermont.fr Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:37880 In article <5h9m3l$1ih@gurney.zeta.org.au>, Andrew Reilly <reilly@zeta.org.au> wrote: >In article <87g1xkqe8d.fsf@erlenstar.demon.co.uk>, > Andrew Gierth <andrew@erlenstar.demon.co.uk> writes: > >> From a user's point of view, and assuming a PC keyboard, there are two keys >> to consider; the <- (backspace) key, and the "Delete" key. Normal user >> expectations require <- to behave as a *destructive* backspace, and "Delete" >> to be 'delete character forward' (kdch1 in terminfo-speek). This can best be >> achieved by having <- generate DEL, having "Delete" generate an escape >> sequence, and defaulting to 'stty erase ^?'. (Which is what I have done on >> my system, and have done in the past to many other Unix flavours, terminals >> and terminal emulators.) This leaves ^h free, which keeps Emacs happy. >> Having "Delete" generate ^h is insane, and likely to confuse people >> considerably. > >Yes, but which escape sequence, and how do you do that? > >I've discovered that using xmodmap to make the "<-" key >return "Delete" makes emacs happy, but Netscape and other >Motif-style applications insist on "BackSpace". So what's >one to do? Reversing backspace and delete sounds like an ugly kludge to me; I prefer my backspace to send backspace (0x8) and my delete to send delete (0x7f) and, with the appropriate stty, all reasonable apps (and even Motif) work with that. The other "religious" solution, making <-- send 0x7f and [Del] send some escape sequence makes sense too, but making [Del] send 0x8 is silly. As for emacs, well since emacs is entirely configurable, if you really want to use it and its default is broken you can pick something else for the help key. And under X, emacs will backspace when you press backspace and give help when you press ^H, because the keysyms are different. Roger -- e-mail: espel@llaic.univ-bpclermont.fr WWW page & PGP key: http://www.eleves.ens.fr:8080/home/espel/index.html