[ On Friday, August 13, 1999 at 21:41:37 (+0100), Roger Brooks wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: delete and backspace...
>
> Because it's correct for a VT2xx/3xx/4xx emulation.  Although the 3 of the 6
> edit keys on a PC keyboard are marked differently from a DEC keyboard
> (Remove, Find & Select), most emulations map the same escape sequences to
> them.  And if someone is going to use such an emulation to log in to
> some system which reuires those keys, they'd better be there (or the poor
> bloody user will end up having to type the escape sequences in by hand!).

This is *ONLY* correct if you have a VT2xx/3xx/4xx keyboard plugged in!

*ALL* PC keyboards I've ever seen, right from the very first original
IBM-PC klunker, label the bigger key in the top right corner of the main
group "backspace", and I've never found anyone who always pronounces
that word as "delete" even though there are an astounding number of
people who now believe that's what it means.  A "backspace" key on an
ASCII (or ISO-8859-x) keyboard should produce an ASCII "backspace"
character (BS == 0x08) and similarly a "delete" key should produce an
ASCII "delete" character (DEL = 0x7F).

The keyboard should *always* behave, by default, as the physical key
labels say it does, regardless of the screen emulation, IMNSHO.

(I put that "by default" caveat in there because I usually have my xdm
start up script reprogram any NDC-108 keyboard [very vt220-like] it
encounters so that the keys bear more resemblence to an AT&T 5620 or Sun
type-4 keyboard.  Of course when I do that to my own terminals I usually
also get out an indelible marker and correct the labels too!  ;-)

I've been maintaining my own kernel patch since the 0.8 days to
"correct" this feature of NetBSD's PC console driver(s).  Unfortunately
it's not anywhere near up-to-date (I've been lazy since running all my
PCs with serial consoles! ;-) otherwise I'd attach it to this message!

The question of what you put after 'stty del' is totally irrelevant here.

(What I want to know is how the vt220 designers won over the vt100
designers on this issue!  Surely the latter didn't change their minds
and actually perpetrate the mistakes attributed to the former!)

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

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