T.SAILOR%DEEP-THOUGHT@EDDIE.MIT.EDU (Ben Bishop) (03/04/86)
First: Bitching about keyboards is not the purpose of info-vax. Vaxes work with a number of different terminals, and vt2xx keyboards (LK201?) is a very-specific non-vax topic. I will, however, annoy myself by adding my own two cents: I noticed the missing escape key almost immediately when I first began using a DEC Rainbow. In terminal mode it acts like a VT102; when it is a microcomputer, the ESC key (F11) sends 'esc [ 2 1 ~' and there IS no escape key available. This is exactly the same as the VT200 series when they are in VT200 mode, 7 bit controls. My work has recently purchased VT200 clones by C.Itoh, which LO! have a REAL escape key (as well as a backspace AND a linfeed key which are ALSO missing from the VT200 keyboard). It seems that NEW terminals will NOT be stearing towards escape-keylessness. Now, onto the Second piece of Silliness. I don't know where you people play with EMACS, but you seem to be awfully confused. SO WHAT if 'ESC [ A' is move up? EMACS doesn't care at ALL. EMACS starts with a predefined allocation of commands to keys, which can be completely redefined at will. The 'M-X Set Key' command is just one of the myriad ways of playing mind games with EMACS. Most people don't change the standard command setup too much, so yes, someone who knows EMACS from one place PROBABLY could use one without trouble a continent away; or could be very, very, confused. My main experience has been with TOPS-20 EMACS, although I am also using GNU-EMACS for BSD 4.3 (where arrow keys work like real arrow keys). And, as a final note: I personally think DEC screwed up with their new keyboard. There is much too much software out there in the real world which uses/REQUIRES the escape key for the escape key to disappear. They may ultimately pay for it, I certainly hope so. Also, to the best of my knowledge, there is no international standard keyboard. Ben Bishop -------