On May 26, 2007, at 2:26 AM, Steve Stallion wrote:
On 5/25/07, Anne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
The sad thing about this is that I still cannot get the backspace
working on
the Java environment. UGH what a major pain. And the DEL key acts
the same
way. The ONLY thing that works for backspace is continually
hitting "CTRL+H"
The Java interface is so much nicer than the CDE, but just can't
use it
without backspace.
Thanks to everyone for trying to get this working.
Anne
I really think this serves as a good reminder to those who are against
providing a method of changing backspace behavior for users which
expect PC like semantics.
In the end, it really doesnt matter what is technically correct, it
comes down to user expectation and needs. Expecting the millions of PC
keyboards out there to be considered obsolete when a very large chunk
of Solaris users are running on PC hardware is just silly.
I think that in reality everyone wants the same thing but there is a
disagreement on how to get there. The key which is usually right
above the return key which is sometimes labeled "backspace" and
sometimes "delete" should delete the character to the left of the
cursor no matter what it's called. Personally I really don't care
how it's done as long as the character to the left of the cursor gets
deleted when I press the key whether I'm typing in an xterm or a text
field of any other X application and it shouldn't matter if it's JDS
or CDE.
As an extra bonus I want it to continue deleting in the same way even
if I login remotely to another machine and not suddenly say ^H or
^?. I don't think there should be a choice of BS or DEL. Why should
there be a choice of the mechanism if I only care about the end
result? The key should just work.
Returning to the original question. I believe there are at least
four methods to change the behaviour: stty, X resources, xmodmap, and
using a shell which accepts either. I tend to use a combination of
all four to get the desired effect.
In .zshrc:
[[ -t 0 ]] && stty erase ^?
In .Xdefaults:
XTerm.VT100.deleteIsDEL: true
In my modmap file (although it seems I stopped using xmodmap a long
time ago so perhaps it's not necessary):
keysym BackSpace = Delete
And finally I use zsh which seems to just get it right.
If all else fails I still have two convenience aliases whenever I
happen to use csh:
alias ^H stty erase ^H
alias ^? stty erase ^?
I guess this shows that my preference is DEL but I assume the steps
would be similar for people preferring BS. It shouldn't matter
though because I hardly ever notice which mechanism is used.
Krister
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