From owner-freebsd-arch Mon Nov 27 17:41:41 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from winston.osd.bsdi.com (winston.osd.bsdi.com [204.216.27.229]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3397D37B4CF for ; Mon, 27 Nov 2000 17:41:39 -0800 (PST) Received: from winston.osd.bsdi.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by winston.osd.bsdi.com (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id eAS1fYh53354; Mon, 27 Nov 2000 17:41:34 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jkh@winston.osd.bsdi.com) To: Kirk McKusick Cc: arch@FreeBSD.ORG, rps@merlin.mat.uc.pt Subject: Re: Rui Pedro Mendes Salgueiro: erase2 patch (was: 4.2-RELEASE ISO image for x86 updated.) In-Reply-To: Message from Kirk McKusick of "Mon, 27 Nov 2000 14:41:05 PST." <200011272241.OAA93364@beastie.mckusick.com> Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 17:41:33 -0800 Message-ID: <53352.975375693@winston.osd.bsdi.com> From: Jordan Hubbard Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > When we first implemented termios at CSRG, we had an erase2 > character. Mike Karels was vehemently opposed to it, and > insisted that it be deleted before we did our next release > (4.3-tahoe if I remember correctly). I am of the opinion that > it is a good idea, and should be there. I do not believe that > we need/want a general aliasing facility as erase is really > the only character for which there is widespead disagreement > over which character to use. So, my take would be to add > erase2 and be done with it. Well, there are the ^U vs ^X folks for line-kill (some even argue for ^W) which is why I cited it as another example; I agree that it's by no means as prevalent as ^H vs DEL though. That said, I'm still not fully convinced that termios was implemented in a fully sane fashion to begin with. If one uses a fairly competent shell like bash, for example, you have a "bind" command which allows you to map any key to any function and I've used that feature to good effect in my .bashrc so I'd have a hard time with any argument that fully bindable keys is an over-engineered solution. The major drawback, of course, is that these editing characters are only useful at the shell prompt and not with other programs which take input, which is why readline(3) type functionality would really not be such a horrible thing to see in termios(4). Back in the day when a really bloated kernel was a couple of hundred kilobytes I'd also probably have been shot at dawn for even making such a suggestion, but I'm hoping that times have changed enough that my life will be spared for doing so. :) - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message