Re: [Mutt] #2952: <BackSpace> should use terminal settings
#2952: <BackSpace> should use terminal settings
Comment (by Kyle Wheeler):
{{{
On Tuesday, September 11 at 04:56 PM, quoth Mutt:
>> <BackSpace> must be defined by behavior, not by the ink printed on
>> the key, because of course no program can know what's printed on the
>> key.
>
> No, that's not how the terminfo works. <BackSpace> means the backspace
> key. No more. Just like <Left> means the left key and so on.
How is the terminfo supposed to know what the user has painted on
their keyboard? It can't know whether the backspace key emits a ^H or
a ^? (or any other value), so why pretend that it's an authoritative
resource on the question of what the backspace key emits? I recognize
that it would be awfully nice if we could somehow always know what key
sequence the backspace key emits, but we simply can't.
After all, what is it about the backspace key that makes it the
backspace key? There's its position on the keyboard, and the fact that
it says "backspace" on it, and what we expect the computer to do when
we press it. Its position on the keyboard can change, and what is
written on it can change as well (Apple keyboards don't have Backspace
and Delete keys, they have Delete and Del keys; older Sun keyboards
don't have Backspace keys either, they have keys with a left-arrow on
them (these keys are the same size as the <Left> key, have the same
picture on them, but are just in the top-right corner of the qwerty
area of the keyboard)). What it all really boils down to as far as
what we mean when we say "the backspace key" is "that key that we
press that we think will delete the character to the left of the
cursor" and no more. But truly, since we can change which key performs
that operation, why are we still working with an obviously broken
definition of "the backspace key" as "that key in the upper-right
corner of the qwerty section of the keyboard that has either
Backspace, Delete, a left-arrow, or something else similarly
suggestive on it"?
~Kyle
}}}
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Ticket URL: <http://dev.mutt.org/trac/ticket/2952#comment:>