In message <20000704040509.043F3DD@proven.weird.com>Greg A. Woods writes
>[ On Monday, July 3, 2000 at 19:35:06 (-0700), Jonathan Stone wrote: ]
>> Subject: Re: i386 xterm key bindings 
>>
>> The point which nobody seems able to answer is:
>>   ``how do I make the delete-left key generate ASCII DEL''?
>
>What I do is make the DELETE key generate ASCII DEL, and the BACKSPACE
>key generate ASCII BS (just as on my Sun type-4 keyboard in native
>SunOS, and as on most sane real terminals, the totally *insanse* DEC
>VT220 series aside).

I think we have violently disagreeing opinion on what constitutes
"sane". I have used DEC VT-52 clones, VT-100 clones (and a vt102),
and vt-220s.  I'm *used* to the delete-to-left key being ASCII DEL.

What I'm *trying* to do is to set up al lthe mappings to approximate a
vt-220 style approach. Since that's exactly what I have on all my
pmaxes, and it's what NetBSD used, more-or-less, to support.

>I generally go one step further in emacs (and similar interfaces)
>and bind "DELETE" to delete the character in front of the mark
>(i.e. under the cursor), just like Ctrl-D does.

hat is *precisely* what i'm trying to fix; it's what the current setup
does once I rlogin to my netbsd-1.4 box, or to a SunOS box.  Except
that I have DEL mapped to the key labelled "backspace".

I want to set up x keybindings that are vt100/vt220-like.
Then, everything pretty much Just Works. Or at least, it used to, up
until the current batch of changes.




>Now of course if you want to go the other way around and follow the
>VT220 down the path of incompatible insanity, as 

Historically, the VT series *was* the standard. It's PC keyboards
which were/are incompatible :).

>indicated, then you should be able to do pretty much the opposite of
>what I do, or rather do almost nothing since that's the default wscons
>configuration, and be equally happy!  ;-)

Yes, except for the short-sighted, insular, badly-engineered changes
to our xterm (is it all platforms, or just i36? I'm going to be
__really__ unhappy if the <X] key on my pmax LK-401 now generates
ASCII backspace in an xterm.


>I'm not sure exactly what you mean -- if you re-bind the keys with
>xmodmap (eg. with something generated by pgksrc/x11/xkeycaps) then
>you'll get the proper bindings in xterm 

No, I don't.  I get the Esc-[-3-~ braindamage.  That's not a
`proper' keybinding: it should be ASCII DEL.


>and thus in any [rs]login or
>telnet session you open from any xterm.  Besides my diskless Sun sparc
>workstations running X11 I also have some NCD X terminals and they by
>default have the naughty VT220 style keyboards.

Lucky, lucky, you. NCD did the right for their market, imho.



>I'd strongly suggest that if "emul=vt100" in /etc/wscons.conf then the
>keyboard map should match a real VT100, and only if it's "vt220" should
>the keyboard map by default do the stupid "BACKSPACE=DEL" nonsense that
>the damn vt220 line of terminals have perpetuated.

I thought real VT100s also had a DEL key where PeeCees have backspace?

What, if anything, does the wscons binding have to do with how
X handles keycodes?  Do the keycodes as seen by the Xserver
go through wscons' mapping?


And that still doesn't explain how I can get the "Delete" keysym
to generate ASCII DEL.  Now, *that* is just broken.