Date: Wed, 26 Mar 1997 09:27:26 -0700 From: Warner Losh <imp@village.org> To: Brian Somers <brian@shift.lan.awfulhak.org> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Backspace = ^H Message-ID: <E0w9vXq-00058x-00@rover.village.org> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 26 Mar 1997 15:43:03 GMT." <199703261543.PAA21535@shift.lan.awfulhak.org> References: <199703261543.PAA21535@shift.lan.awfulhak.org>
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[[ cc line trimmed ]] In message <199703261543.PAA21535@shift.lan.awfulhak.org> Brian Somers writes: : 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. No. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that emacs works the way that it does. I type ^H to get help, and if it doesn't give me help, then I'll get upset. : 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. Ummm, ^H can be typed easily. Place your left little finger on the control key and your left index finger on the H :-). And I strongly disagree. I hit that funny looking key over my Enter key when I want to delete the previous character. I guess I'm saying that emacs isn't broken. I usually use it in X mode and I type ^H to get help and BackSpace to delete. Don't change that at least. : 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 ? No. Well maybe. What character should be bound to erase in stty by default? Some do BS others do DEL. FreeBSD does BS (but used to do DEL). : 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. OK. Make the funny looking key generate 0x7f and the Delete key generate 0x08. That's the only right thing to do. Others will disagree, that's what makes it a religious argument. Hacking Emacs so that I have to re-learn emacs on my FreeBSD box is *BAD*. Yes, maybe emacs might have gotten it wrong, but that's how emacs works. Don't break emacs with your religious wars. Emacs works just fine on many many different systems. Making it different on FreeBSD for religious reasons is *BAD*. I'm sorry to be adamant about this, but think about this for a bit. Changing Emacs is a religious solution to a religious problem. Emacs works the way that it does. It would be like saying that vi's insert mode was a bad idea and all the keys should be rebound to control keys so that there wouldn't need to be two modes. This is a religious argument, and will likely never get agreement on it. BTW, I'm not saying it is a bad idea to change things because they will disturb my hacks. I'm saying it is a bad idea to change the default behavior of emacs. That's a big reason I don't use XEmacs, for example. My brain is wired to use emacs, and changes to it should only be done as a last resort. And we're no where near that yet. My argument is "Emacs works the way that it works. ^H is bound to the help stuff. My fingers (and lots of other people) know how to cope. It is unfortunate that FreeBSD generates 0x08 for the funny looking key, but don't go remapping emacs default keys to compensate. Besides, it works just fine when running as an X window." Yes, it would be nice for things to work out of the box. Go get the folks gnu.emacs.* groups to agree to this change, and I'll give in. Don't sneak it in based on discussions here. Warner
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