From owner-freebsd-hackers  Wed Mar 26 10:35:46 1997
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To: Brian Somers <brian@shift.lan.awfulhak.org>
cc: Warner Losh <imp@village.org>,
        Andrew Gierth <andrew@erlenstar.demon.co.uk>,
        brian@awfulhak.demon.co.uk, brian@utell.co.uk,
        freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Backspace = ^H 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 26 Mar 1997 15:43:03 GMT."
             <199703261543.PAA21535@shift.lan.awfulhak.org> 
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Date: Wed, 26 Mar 1997 10:40:45 -0800
From: "Reginald S. Perry" <reggie@aa.net>
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>>>>> On Wed, 26 Mar 1997 15:43:03 +0000, Brian Somers <brian@shift.lan.awfulhak.org> said:

    Brian> BS=0x08 and DEL=0x7f - that's the only standard cast in
    Brian> stone.  The rest should be made work properly around this
    Brian> fact.  Am I missing anything ?

    Brian> The idea is to stop the default from being "you've always
    Brian> got to hack this stuff on a unix box".  Let's get it right.

Well I think this is a tough one. First we have to define whats
broken. I believe that its only the introduction of the PC keyboard
that broke this. The VT200 I have sitting here has a delete key where
the backspace key is on the keyboard. I know this was true of all DEC
terminals and I believe that the ANSI terminal standard evolved from
DEC terminals. I think that most of the terminals I used back in the
bad old days of the early eighties had a delete key there. Emacs was
developed using terminals older than the VT series and the delete key,
control key and escape key were in the places where GOD intended them
to be, i.e. not requiring knowledge of the vulcan nerve pinch to do
useful work. :-)

So I would hate that you change the semantics and then when I hook my
terminal back onto my machine, it breaks that.


-Reggie