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  From: Alan Kennington <akenning@dog.topology.org>
  To  : lloy0076@senet.com.au
  Date: Sun, 28 Nov 1999 13:41:25 +1030

Re: X Woes [worse than Windows]

Concerning re-assignments of keys,
the problem is all caused by the MS-style
"innovations" in key assignments.

The ASCII alphabet, which I remember using way
back in the olden days, around 1972, has characters:

8	BS	backspace
63	DEL	delete (to the left)

The VT series of keyboards, of which the
modern keyboard is a derivative, have
a "backspace" kay above the enter-key,
and a couple of "delete" keys.

These, throughout most of history,
excluding MS history, have meant
BS and DEL respectively.

But MS wanted to innovate.
So the characters were redefined in the
MS context as

BS	= delete (to the left)
DEL	= delete to the right

And because MS-infected machines proliferated,
people started redefining key assignments
in X11 so that MS users would not have to re-train.

But once you start mucking around in this way,
heaps of programs and terminal emulators etc.
get very confused.
If MS had no "innovated", all would have been bliss.

Personally, I try to redefine my MS-ized
key definitions back to standard VT-terminal
semantics, unless the "innovation" has been
too deeply embedded in the key re-definitions.

In your case, you've got the non-existent
delete-to-the-right character assigned to
the BS key. This is a double re-definition.

Obviously you have some software which is
reading the BS key interpreted as
delete-to-the-left and translating it
for you to the innovative delete-to-the-right.

I suspect it is your _application_ which is doing this,
not X11. X11 is only translating BS to DEL for you
so that you don't have to unlearn the MS innovations.

Cheerio,
Alan Kennington.

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