nazgul@alfalfa.com (Kee Hinckley) (05/22/91)
Someone posted to one of these lists, I forget which, that the Backspace vs. Delete problem (which way does Delete delete) was one of a Terminal mindset vs. an Editor mindset. (My apologies if I've oversimplified.) I've thought about this some and I disagree. I have no complaint with having Delete delete backwards, in fact I spent 6 years in a graphical environment where it did just that and I was perfectly happy. My issue is really one of switching from one keyboard to another - something which I have to do all too often (I have four distinct types of keyboards sitting around me right now). The only reason I want Delete to delete backwards on my Sun is that it's sitting right where I expect to find Backspace, and where in fact I find the "key that deletes backwards" on all of the other keyboards I use. (Some of them call it Delete, some call it BackSpace, but on all the systems it deletes backwards). I guess I don't make the terminal vs. editing distinction because I'm used to doing editing in my terminal emulators (on the command line). I've always used the editing model, and it has nothing to do with which key deletes which way. I *have* noticed that some people are more comfortable using one form of delete or the other. I've watched with amazement as people move backwards a word and delete forward character by character - and then I've realized that I'll often move forward to the end of the word and delete back character by character. Would those two different editing models prefer that the same key do different things? Perhaps, although I've known very few people at Apollo who changed their backspace key to delete forward, even though the Apollo environment makes doing that far more trivial than X does. This all kind of rambles. I think about the only thing that is clear is that it's a no win situation. You're never going to make everyone happy. Alfalfa Software, Inc. | Poste: The EMail for Unix nazgul@alfalfa.com | Send Anything... Anywhere 617/646-7703 (voice/fax) | info@alfalfa.com I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate everyone else's.