Re: Problem with function keys codes with vt100 emulation

[Christopher Faylor <cgf at redhat dot com>]

On Thu, Nov 07, 2002 at 10:45:54AM -0800, Reza Roodsari wrote:
>This email is about your expressed opinion that the cygwin key bindings
>could have been better than they currently are.  I have been thinking about
>what you are saying, and it seems to me that this is very much like the <LF>
>vs. <CR><LF> issue.  No choice is right for every situation and there will
>always be people with strong opinions on both side.  That's why cygwin
>handles it the way it does - "you, the people, get a choice".  And now
>everyone is happy (or at least fully responsible for the results they get).

It is nothing like that.  Someone, IMO, chose poorly when they selected
key sequences for the linux console and someone else chose to slavishly
emulate the linux console rather than some existing implementation like
xterm which already had some established key bindings.

I ported an editor to any number of systems and getting the editor to
work on the linux console was one of the biggest pains that I had.  The
editor had to understand all of the key bindings and the key bindings
for the console are close-but-not-quite like a number of other systems.
It looks almost like someone chose bindings based on a vague
recollection of a vt220 or xterm but didn't bother to check how those
systems implemented things.

>It occurred to me that the cygwin console, being that it is fathered by
>Unix but lives in the house of Windows, could suffer from the same
>multiple-personality disorder.  So one way out would be to make the
>terminal emulation choice an install time option.

It is not worth the effort, IMO.

Anyway, that's it for me on this thread.  I've gone too far down the
rathole.

cgf

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