[mod.computers.vax] Vaxstation II keyboard

WEISS@RED.RUTGERS.EDU (02/24/86)

Operating system: MicroVMS 4.1M
Hardware: Vaxstation II

Commenting on the keys mentioned in previous messages, I see the following:

 - No single ESCAPE key
 - CTL-space does not send a ctl-null or anything else (therefore
   cannot be used as set-mark in emacs)
 - CTL 3 sends a CTL-S

I have not found any means of telling the system to emulate a vt100
keyboard. What I have is a window that displays the heading "VT100
Terminal" and a keyboard that is sending VT200 8 bit ASCII codes.

Sholom Weiss

-------

JBS%DEEP-THOUGHT@EDDIE.MIT.EDU (Jeff Siegal) (02/26/86)

Wake up and smell the coffee (sorry for the cliche).

1) The ESC key is dead.  It is an unmanagable concept.  If you
   don't know why, I'll be glad to explain it.

2) C-S, C-Q are too commonly used in the communcations protocol
   to be useful in applications.  I hurts me to say this, since
   I'm generally an EMACS fan too.

DEC is not causing the problem.  The problem is applications which
have not evolved to co-exist with modern terminal/communications
standards.

Jeff Siegal
-------

jon@CSVAX.CALTECH.EDU (03/02/86)

>   1) The ESC key is dead.  It is an unmanagable concept.  If you
>      don't know why, I'll be glad to explain it.
>	...
>
>   Jeff Siegal

    Yes, please do. I don't think that ESC is vanishing from ASCII, or
that ANSI terminal command strings are going to change any time  soon,
so I don't understand what this comment refers to.

    -- Jon Leech (jon@csvax.caltech.edu)
    __@/

jdz@WUCEC2.UUCP (Jason D. Zions) (03/05/86)

In article <12186413100.24.JBS@DEEP-THOUGHT.MIT.EDU>
	info-vax@ucbvax.UUCP writes:
>Wake up and smell the coffee (sorry for the cliche).

>1) The ESC key is dead.  It is an unmanagable concept.  If you
>   don't know why, I'll be glad to explain it.

Whoa, there. I'd love to hear your explanation. <ESC> is part of the ASCII
character set; it was provided to allow one to <ESC>ape from some normal in-
terpretation of a character or characters. Sounds like what EMACS and other
programs use it for; vi uses it to <ESC>ape from insert mode, etc. It should
damn well be generatable from the keyboard; considering its prevalence in the
real world, DEC should be more sensitive to it. TECO is unuseable without it.

>2) C-S, C-Q are too commonly used in the communcations protocol
>   to be useful in applications.  I hurts me to say this, since
>   I'm generally an EMACS fan too.

I have to agree with your here; <DC1> and <DC3> are reserved for device con-
trol, and you  can't blame people for building hardware that expects it to be
used in any other way. Of course, one should be able to escape its meaning,
prhaps with <ESC> and perhaps with <DLE>.

>Jeff Siegal

This is probably not the appropraite place to continue this discussion; that
is probably net.info-terms. Please direct all followup there.
-- 
Jason D. Zions			...!{seismo,cbosgd,ihnp4}!wucs!wucec2!jdz
Box 1045 Washington University
St. Louis MO 63130  USA		(314) 889-6160
Nope, I didn't say nothing. Just random noise.