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Date:      Wed, 26 Mar 1997 08:23:27 -0700
From:      Warner Losh <imp@village.org>
To:        Andrew Gierth <andrew@erlenstar.demon.co.uk>
Cc:        brian@awfulhak.demon.co.uk, brian@utell.co.uk, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Backspace = ^H 
Message-ID:  <E0w9uXw-000540-00@rover.village.org>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "26 Mar 1997 13:18:40 GMT." <877miussen.fsf@erlenstar.demon.co.uk> 
References:  <877miussen.fsf@erlenstar.demon.co.uk>  <5h2c01$4i2@reader.seed.net.tw> <5h6e83$1mk@ui-gate.utell.co.uk> <E7KvDC.ILE@nemesis.lonestar.org> <5h8905$lj1@ui-gate.utell.co.uk> <87g1xkqe8d.fsf@erlenstar.demon.co.uk> <5h9m3l$1ih@gurney.zeta.org.au> <199703261154.LAA11351@shift.lan.awfulhak.org> 

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In message <877miussen.fsf@erlenstar.demon.co.uk> Andrew Gierth writes:
: >>>>> "Brian" == Brian Somers <brian@shift.lan.awfulhak.org.demon.co.uk> writes:
:  Brian> I'll co-ordinate with
:  Brian> Jordan (the maintainer of the emacs port) a patch to change
:  Brian> the default help key binding to ^x^h (now that's gonna cause
:  Brian> some "controversial" arguments!) - assuming he agrees.

That's a *BAD* Idea.  *DO*NOT*CHANGE*EMACS*DEFAULTS*.  Emacs may be
broken, according to some of the more "religious" members of this
group, but that's how it works.  Don't make me relearn how to use
emacs because some people have religious problems with DEL vs BS.
Emacs works the way that it works, and if you don't like it, change it
in *YOUR* .emacs file.  But don't force it on me when I build from the
ports/editors/emacs.

At best you should mail Jordan a .emacs file snippet that can be
included somewhere convenient so those people that want it can use
it.

: Please don't do this until you have reviewed the prior debates on comp.emacs
: as to future directions of the help key binding. The issue is less 
: straightforward than you are assuming.

Yes.  While you "can" change emacs's notion of ^H vs ^?, it won't work
in all contexts.  Having tried to go that route several times myself,
I can only say that too many packages know too much about the default
bindings and won't really let you change them.

My "final" solution for emacs was very simple.  I put the following in
my .Xdefaults file.

XTerm*vt100*translations: #override \n\
	<KeyPress> BackSpace: string( 0x7f )\n

and hacking my console keymap to do the right thing, imho, (that is
the key labeled <-- generates DEL and the Delete key generates BS).

I also have stty erase ^? in my .files.

Every other solution that I tried to come up with pissed me off
because they didn't work everywhere.

Please note: I'm not suggesting changing the defaults for FreeBSD.  It
too works the way it works :-).

Warner




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