[696] in Release_7.7_team
Suggestion for a future release
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Reid M. Pinchback)
Tue Aug 6 15:29:39 1996
To: release-team@MIT.EDU
Date: Tue, 06 Aug 1996 15:29:30 EDT
From: "Reid M. Pinchback" <reidmp@MIT.EDU>
I was just talking to Craig about this, and he suggested I
feed the idea into the release team for future (ie: not
the one about to go out) releases.
In our environment we configure X to swap delete and backspace; the
result is, at least on the Sun, that backspace and delete do exactly
the opposite of what you expect them to do. Craig explained that this
was done once-upon-a-time to fix a key reversal problem on an older
platform (VAXstation, maybe needed for DECstation too?). As a result,
when we install 3rd-party software we have to modify the app-defaults
or other configuration files in order to swap the keys back; that
would be ok if that was actually sufficient to solve the problem
fully. Packages that use various Motif-generated dialog boxes (to
save files, for example) don't usually benefit from the attempted fix;
keyboard editing in the fields of the dialog box also have the
backspace/delete reversal problem.
For example packages where you will notice this problem:
Maple
Netscape
and I could probably find many more.
So, the issue is basically this: if the key behaviour reversal really
was only there to fix a problem on platforms that we either no longer
use or are about to get rid of, then why continue to do it in the future?
===============================================================
= Reid M. Pinchback =
= Senior Faculty Liaison =
= Academic Computing Services, MIT =
= =
= Email: reidmp@mit.edu =
= URL: http://web.mit.edu/reidmp/www/home.html =
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