

Re: BS in rxvt+ncurses

On Sun, 7 Dec 1997, Philip Hands wrote:

> Sorry, but don't we keep on agreeing that the <--- key generating DEL is the 
> right thing to do ?

No, we don't.

> I could have sworn that I've been in several discussions that resulted in that 
> conclusion, with the caveat that people should be able to reverse the default 
> easily if they feel the need, as a local configuration option.
> I must admit that I have got a little bored with the discussion at times, and 
> may have skipped some of it.  So if someone has a more powerful argument for 
> ``<--- generates BS'' than ``well they sound the same'' I'd like to hear it.

I started using PCs when the only choice for me was MS-DOS with probably
MS-Windows 3.0 on it. Things were easy back then. The 'Backspace' key did
'Backspace' and the 'Delete' key did 'Delete', just like the letters on
the keys said.

A year ago I started using Linux and all of a sudden I got confronted with
people who strongly believe that the 'Backspace' key should do 'Delete'.
This is very, very confusing to me. Why don't you just let the keys do
what is written on them? I don't want the 'A' key to generate a 'B' and I
don't want my 'Backspace' key to do 'Delete'. I have a 'Delete' key for

I just want to be able to use both the 'Backspace' key and the 'Delete'
key on any VC, xterm or rxvt and I want them to do just what I expect them
to do, which is the same as what they do in MS-DOS.

Now, if I am seeing it totally wrong, then please explain it to me.


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