dps@omssw2.UUCP (Dave Schneider) (12/05/86)
> ... Your terminal or terminal emulator could have a mode in > which it translates keyboard entry of Control-S and Control-Q into > something else - either multi-character escape sequences or other > control characters....There are probably existing ibmpc > terminal emulator programs with keystroke macros powerful enough ... I would like to add a complaint about terminal manufacturers who set up the arrow keys to send single character control codes. Invariably, it will cause a distortion somewhere. We ran into this problem with VI when we first started using TVI 914's, and when I wanted to use arrow keys with emacs, I had to move a half-dozen functions (imagine: arrows that send ^V (c. down) and ^L (c. left?)). The Wyse 50 and Wyse 60 have the same problem, but at least on the Wyse 60 you can reprogram the arrow keys, and not have to do a lot of translations when you're in someone else's office. It's a lot easier to only have to step back and think "next line...oh, that's ^N" and not have to say "next line...oh, that's ^V...oh, my .emacsrc isn't running here, what's the ori- ginal next line...oh, that's ^N, which I normally use for next-page...." Does anyone know why Televideo and Wyse made this contribution to brain- damage? P.S. RMS should note that Wyse 50's and 60's don't behave nicely on ^space -- the most convenient keystroke built in is ^`, though it would be easy to set up a function key, and there are 32 possible function keys. Dave "dpsatomssw2" Friday, 12.5
mlandau@Diamond.UUCP (12/10/86)
In comp.emacs (article <533@omssw2.UUCP>), dps@omssw2.UUCP (Dave Schneider) writes: > >I would like to add a complaint about terminal manufacturers who set up the >arrow keys to send single character control codes. > >Does anyone know why Televideo and Wyse made this contribution to brain- >damage? Well, one can argue (quite successfully) that sending single-character codes for arrow and function keys makes it a lot easier to write programs to use those keys. Having to read multiple characters (and, in some Emacs'es, set up multiple keymaps) to deal with arrow keys that send things like Esc-[-A is pretty much a crock. It's just a crock that has been around for a long time, thanks to things like the VT100. When does it become time to say "We don't CARE if that's how it's been done for the past 10 years. It's time to do something BETTER!"? -- Matt Landau BBN Laboratories, Inc. mlandau@diamond.bbn.com 10 Moulton Street, Cambridge MA 02238 ...seismo!diamond.bbn.com!mlandau (617) 497-2429
jr@CC5.BBN.COM.UUCP (12/10/86)
I really have to differ with Matt's opinion about escape sequences. The VT100 "things like ESC-[-A" actually follow a well-thought-out standard known as ANSI X3.64 for coding characters to and from a terminal. It is very easy to write a parser for these sequences. It becomes a very powerful inter-process procedure call mechanism if you want. Given that there are only 128 codes available for most terminals, it is just not possible to assign every function key a unique single-character code. ESC is the "escape" character for extending the character set beyond the 128 (actualy 96) available characters. I think the VT100 does it right. Also, given the existence of a real standard, not to mention the VT100 beinbg a de-facto standard before that, things could be a lot worse. Now if only emacs had an ANSI parser...maybe I should go add it. /jr jr@bbn.com ...!bbnccv!jr
opie@mit-vax.UUCP (Ralph Opie) (12/12/86)
[Please don't feed the line-eater.] In case I don't manage to set all the header lines to show the appropriate person, I'm really Stephen Humble (sthumble@athena.mit.edu), using a friend's account to post to the net. To business. I recently started work at a company with a lot of Apollos (nice windows) and Unipress emacs (miserable). Is there anyone on the net who can tell me about Gnuemacs on the Apollo? I've read the file gnuemacs/etc/APOLLO and it makes me a little uneasy. The Apollos where I work have a network problem that makes them _very_ slow when running Apollo's csh emulator: 5-10 seconds for cd and the like. 1. Can Gnuemacs run in Apollo's native shell (Aegis)? 2. How much lisp has to be loaded at startup and how long does that take? 3. Does Aegis have any delightful quirks :-( re Gnuemacs that aren't mentioned in etc/APOLLO? 4. any other information. Please reply via e-mail since I rarely read netnews. Thanks.
inc@tc.fluke.COM (Gary Benson) (12/13/86)
In article <2789@slate.Diamond.BBN.COM>, mlandau@Diamond.BBN.COM (Matt Landau) writes: > In comp.emacs (article <533@omssw2.UUCP>), dps@omssw2.UUCP (Dave Schneider) writes: > > > >I would like to add a complaint about terminal manufacturers who set up the > >arrow keys to send single character control codes. > > > >Does anyone know why Televideo and Wyse made this contribution to brain- > >damage? > > Well, one can argue that sending single-character > codes for arrow and function keys makes it a lot easier to write programs > to use those keys. Having to ... deal with arrow keys that send > things like Esc-[-A is pretty much a crock. It's just a crock that has > been around for a long time, thanks to things like the VT100. When > does it become time to say "We don't CARE if that's how it's been done > for the past 10 years. It's time to do something BETTER!"? > -- > Matt Landau BBN Laboratories, Inc. Oops, I think your ignorance is showing there podner. ESC-[-A isn't just something DEC pulled out of the air to confuse poor EMACS! The VT-100 terminal is so widely used and became an industry standard because it implements ANSI standard X3.41. Standards are awfully tough to come by, and it is not a trivial task to create them. X3.41 is responsible for ASCII, the 8-bit character standard that makes it possible for you to so effortlessly complain about "multiple character codes". So what if a key generates a string? Computers deal with strings quite as well as they do with single characters. I'll vote in favor of scrapping X3.41 just as soon as you volunteer to design the new standard. Then sell me on it. Then sell it to the world. Until you're ready to do that, just relax, learn the rules of the game and play by them.
jr@ALEXANDER.BBN.COM (John Robinson) (12/15/86)
Oops ... >> Oops, I think your ignorance is showing there podner. >> The VT-100 >> terminal is so widely used and became an industry standard because it >> implements ANSI standard X3.41. Actually, it implements part of, or rather is compliant with, ANS (American National Standard) X3.64, which includes by reference ANS X3.4, the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII), and extends it by specifying a lot of the things you can do with the control characters. ASCII pretty much confines itself to the printing characters. ASCII is also an international (ISO) standard, and is called IA5 for International Alphabet 5 (sorry, I forget the ISO standard number). Many termcaps now include an X3.64 generic terminal definition called "ansi". >> Standards are awfully tough to come by, and >> it is not a trivial task to create them. X3.41 is responsible for ASCII, >> the 8-bit character standard that makes it possible for you to so >> effortlessly complain about "multiple character codes". No argument here beyond numbering. /jr
robert@gitpyr.UUCP (12/15/86)
>inc@tc.fluke.COM (Gary Benson) (inc@tc.fluke.COM, <844@tpvax.tc.fluke.COM>): > Oops, I think your ignorance is showing there podner. ESC-[-A isn't just > something DEC pulled out of the air to confuse poor EMACS! The VT-100 > terminal is so widely used and became an industry standard because it > implements ANSI standard X3.41. Standards are awfully tough to come by, and > it is not a trivial task to create them. X3.41 is responsible for ASCII, > the 8-bit character standard that makes it possible for you to so > effortlessly complain about "multiple character codes". Just to set the record straight, ESC-[-A isn't in the X3.41 standard. It's in the X3.64 standard, along with most of the other control sequences the VT100 and other ANSI standard terminal recognize. However, I would like to add that no-where in the standard does it say that cursor keys are supposed to send ESC-[-A, B, C, or D. The standard has nothing whatsoever to say about key definitions or keyboards at all. All it covers is what sequence the device will recognize in it's receiving stream. Now, while it may be perfectly logical to have the cursor keys send ESC-[-A, B, C, or D, DEC's practice of having the function keys send ESC-O-x (where "x" is just about any character) is, in my opinion, contrary to the standard. ESC-O is a Single-Shift-3, which is used to switch character sets for the next received character, not for distinguishing function keys from other keys on the keyboard. robert -- Robert Viduya robert@pyr.ocs.gatech.edu Office of Computing Services (404) 894-4660 Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, Georgia 30332