Aucbvax.4181 fa.editor-p utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!editor-people Fri Oct 2 22:01:03 1981 function keys >From EAK@MIT-MC Thu Oct 1 23:00:36 1981 I thought I'd point out a technique that Robert Wells at BBN used in his editor's command set. He wisely decided that everything should be doable via terminal indepedent control characters, but that function keys should work too when they're available (in a terminal dependent manner). This would be easy if either 1) all function keys were programmable (in particular the arrow keys), or 2) it was always possible to distinquish a function key from something the user types (e.g. function keys send ^\ X and the ^\ key sends ^\ ^\). Unfortunately neither of these is true for commercial terminals. However, most (but not all!) terminals prefix their function key sequences with ESC, so he did the next best thing: he did not used the ESC key in the terminal independent command set. Thus ESC A can be made to move up on a VT100, and something else on a C100. The user that wants to edit in a terminal independent manner doesn't care because ESC is not used in any of the commands he uses. Such are the hacks that are necessary to live in the commercial world. ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.