Unknown@hplabs.UUCP (04/27/86)
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jqj%gvax@gvax.UUCP (04/27/86)
In article <1620@wucs.UUCP> nz@wucs.UUCP (Neal Ziring) writes: >The way I originally heard it from DEC-20 hacks was: > . . . > ^Z ctrl-Z was originally the C-M- prefix... ^Z was chosen > because it is near where the META key is on keyboards > with META keys. Actually, some even earlier history: on ITS, ^Z was the EMACS exit, and ^C was C-M- (I think). Tops-20 people at SRI and Stanford who grabbed ITS Emacs didn't like it, so browbeat RMS into agreeing that meanings of ^C and ^Z should be switched. Needless to say, this left a situation that was very confusing to those of us who were using both ITS and Twenex EMACS; good thing "CONTINUE" existed!
barmar%mit-eddie@mit-eddie.UUCP (04/28/86)
In article <1620@wucs.UUCP> nz@wucs.UUCP (Neal Ziring) writes: > ^Z ctrl-Z was originally the C-M- prefix, and I have > made it be so for my environment. ^Z was chosen > because it is near where the META key is on keyboards > with META keys. That's not quite the way it happened. EMACS was originally implemented on ITS, on which ^Z was normally the interrupt character, so ^Z was bound to a command to suspend the editor, and ^C was the C-M- prefix command. When it was ported to TOPS-20, these two commands were interchanged, because ^C on TOPS-20 is analogous to ^Z on ITS. I suspect that ^C may have been used in the original implementation because it is one of the initials of Control or Meta, and most other characters were already taken. -- Barry Margolin ARPA: barmar@MIT-Multics UUCP: ..!genrad!mit-eddie!barmar