Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 16 Dec 2006 19:34:13 +0100 (MET) | From | Jan Engelhardt <> | Subject | Re: [Fwd: escape key] |
| |
On Dec 16 2006 08:45, Pavel Machek wrote: > >> Two escapes works now. :-) > >Actually could we fix our consoles, somehow, to make esc usable? >Having important key like esc unusable on consoles is quite ugly.
It's something between a misdesign and a misconfiguration of the ESC key.
In other words, many unices make ESC generate ^[, the general terminal escape character that is _also_ generated by keys like "up", ^[[A.
MS-DOS, or rather QBASIC's, Turbo BASIC's and other implementation of keys, does not have this "bug": here ESC generates "\x1B" and "up" generates "\x00H" IIRC. There is no key defined to generate "\x00". => All fits nicely.
So I see two steps:
- making ESC generate something else than ^[, or making function keys do something else
- fixing the terminfo description and the xterms
- possibly creating a new termtype ("linux2" or "xterm2") so as to not tamper with compatibility
Then text-console graphic applications (ncurses, slang, etc.) would not need to wait the defined one second for an escape sequence to complete.
HOWEVER, unix people probably _had a reason_ to make ESC generate part of what function keys do. Should my UP key go broke, I could still - though probably tedious - reproduce it by hitting the three keys ESC [ A. Problem, as pointed out, is that ESC has long been used by the majority of people back then for something else than doing terminal sequences by hand: DOS, apps, games, Windows GUIs, and, I suppose, even X11.
-`J' -- - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
| |