todd@uhccux.UUCP (The Perplexed Wiz) (06/24/87)
I know what I am about to say is heresey and I will get flamed..but
here goes....
I want to know how to swap the functions of the DEL key and ^H in
GNU EMACS. Here is the problem, I spend quite a bit a time sitting
in front of an HP Portable keyboard and an HP 9000 keyboard. Both
of those d*mb keyboards have DEL as a shifted character above ESC.
As you can imagine it is real annoying to have to press <SHIFT-ESC>
everytime I want to do a destructive backspace. And since the
HP Portable keyboard has this really awful "feel" I often don't press
the SHIFT key hard enough and have to C-g the ESC.
Any hints would be appreciated...thanks...todd
--
Todd Ogasawara, U. of Hawaii Center for Teaching Excellence
UUCP: {ihnp4,seismo,ucbvax,dcdwest}!sdcsvax!nosc!uhccux!todd
ARPA: uhccux!todd@nosc.MIL
INTERNET: todd@uhccux.UHCC.HAWAII.EDUwunder@hpcea.HP.COM (Walter Underwood) (06/24/87)
Well, you are certainly right about the pessimal placement of the DEL key on the HP 9000 keyboard (known as the ITF keyboard internally). As far as I know, every GNU Emacs user in Hewlett-Packard uses the keyboard-translate-table to swap C-H and DEL. The bright spot is that the "Extend Char" keys work great as Meta keys, if you can get to the keycodes. When running GNU Emacs on X windows, it can read the keycodes. Walter Underwood Corporate Engineering
mayer@hplabsc.UUCP (Niels Mayer) (06/25/87)
Try doing (load "term/bobcat") in your .emacs file.
In fact, that file (...dist-18.xx/lisp/term/bobcat.el) uses the
keyboard translate table to perform the swap as mentioned in a
previous article. Here's the file.... note the amazing lack of any
copyright bogosity in the preamble.
-----
;;; HP terminals usually encourage using ^H as the rubout character
(let ((the-table (make-string 128 0)))
(let ((i 0))
(while (< i 128)
(aset the-table i i)
(setq i (1+ i))))
;; Swap ^H and DEL
(aset the-table ?\177 ?\^h)
(aset the-table ?\^h ?\177)
(setq keyboard-translate-table the-table))
-----
I load this into site-init.el in most versions of gnuemacs that I have
running.... I even find it useful for non hp keyboards such as the
Zenith/Heath 19/29, Sun 1/2/3, and MicrovaxII's that plague the
Stanford campus. I am conditioned to use ^H as backspace and
mnemonics don't make sense when your brain runs on behaviourism.
-- Niels.ron@topaz.rutgers.edu.UUCP (06/29/87)
Well fix X then! Geez, it works fine on MicroVAXes. (Since you are corporate engineering maybe you can get this fixed for us all). At least the 9000/500 died a natural death. -Ron By the way, does ITF have some cute meaning?
todd@uhccux.UUCP (The Perplexed Wiz) (07/01/87)
In article <2103@hplabsc.UUCP> mayer@hplabsc.UUCP (Niels Mayer) writes: >Try doing (load "term/bobcat") in your .emacs file. That sure did the trick! Just wanted to thank everyone who responded by mail or a followup posting to my question. Life is a lot easier now that I don't have to press SHIFT-ESC to generate a destructive backspace on the Bobcat or my HP Portable...todd -- Todd Ogasawara, U. of Hawaii Center for Teaching Excellence UUCP: {ihnp4,seismo,ucbvax,dcdwest}!sdcsvax!nosc!uhccux!todd ARPA: uhccux!todd@nosc.MIL INTERNET: todd@uhccux.UHCC.HAWAII.EDU