[4476] in testers
Re: Linux 8.4.4: zwgc, backspace, etc.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jacob Morzinski)
Tue Jun 20 07:50:01 2000
To: "Christopher D. Beland" <beland@MIT.EDU>
Cc: testers@MIT.EDU
Mime-Version: 1.0 (generated by tm-edit 7.106)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
From: Jacob Morzinski <jmorzins@MIT.EDU>
Date: 20 Jun 2000 07:49:45 -0400
In-Reply-To: "Christopher D. Beland"'s message of Tue, 20 Jun 2000 02:58:10 -0400
Message-ID: <w6mbt0wefmu.fsf@well.mit.edu>
<beland@MIT.EDU> (Christopher D. Beland) writes:
> Another problem (that happens to be one of my pet peeves) is backspace
> inconsistency. Hitting "Backspace" or "Eelete" when typing a zephyr
> under zwrite, or when editing a URL in Netscape, does not have the
> desired effect of deleting the character to the left. CTRL-h does
> work, but only if you know enough to use it.
I would suggest using "xev" or some other tool to investigate what
keysyms are generated by your keyboard backspace and delete keys.
I'd also suggest checking the output of "stty -a" to see what ASCII
character your xterm is using for an erase character.
Tract about backspace/delete which many have probably seen before:
Dealing with backspace keys requires Care. I believe that
workstations are configured so that uncustomized accounts get a
particular type of BackSpace/Delete behavior. You may have
customized at least one aspect of your account (your terminal erase
character is ^H), so you may need to customize other parts as well.
I logged into an 8.4.4 linux machine and an 8.4.4 Solaris machine,
using a test account, choosing "no customizations". On each
machine, "xev" confirmed that my keyboard backspace key generated
the BackSpace keysym and my keyboard delete key generated the Delete
keysym. These settings are *CRUCIAL* for X applications, most of
which use the BackSpace keysym for delete-character-backward.
Additionally, each machine had X resources in an app-defaults file
for xterm, which specified that either BackSpace or Delete keysyms
will generate ASCII DEL characters in the xterm. This is a
reasonable thing to do for Unix terminals, because terminal-mode
emacs demands that DEL be used to erase characters. Athena
configures the default terminals to use DEL (^?) for erase.
-Jacob
