Date: Wed, 26 Mar 1997 15:43:03 +0000 From: Brian Somers <brian@shift.lan.awfulhak.org> To: Warner Losh <imp@village.org> Cc: Andrew Gierth <andrew@erlenstar.demon.co.uk>, brian@awfulhak.demon.co.uk, brian@utell.co.uk, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Backspace = ^H Message-ID: <199703261543.PAA21535@shift.lan.awfulhak.org> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 26 Mar 1997 08:23:27 MST." <E0w9uXw-000540-00@rover.village.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
>
This is a bad argument. You're saying that nothing should be changed
because it would disturb the hacks that you *had* to do to get things
right.
I'm saying that there shouldn't be any hacks. You shouldn't have to
reverse BS and DEL. Emacs has decided to use ^h for help - for
whatever reason. This key (assuming things are corrected) can't be
typed (unless you stick a ^v or whatever the terminal lnext char is
in front of it), so it's a bad choice. You shouldn't be typing ^h
unless you want to delete a character - unless you re-write your
keyboard key translations, your termcap entry and do your sttys.
BS=0x08 and DEL=0x7f - that's the only standard cast in stone. The
rest should be made work properly around this fact. Am I missing
anything ?
The idea is to stop the default from being "you've always got to
hack this stuff on a unix box". Let's get it right.
--
Brian <brian@awfulhak.demon.co.uk> <brian@freebsd.org>
<http://www.awfulhak.demon.co.uk>;
Don't _EVER_ lose your sense of humour !
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