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From: karl@ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Newsgroups: comp.std.misc
Subject: Re: Position of the ESC key (was Re: Standard keyboard)
Summary: It's not that simple
Message-ID: <1991Feb28.012958.17519@ima.isc.com>
Date: 28 Feb 91 01:29:58 GMT
References: <742@caslon.cs.arizona.edu> <87723@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <1991Jan28.195647.21789@craycos.com> <1991Feb21.015322.14213@contact.uucp>
Sender: news@ima.isc.com (NEWS ADMIN)
Reply-To: karl@ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Organization: Interactive Systems, Cambridge, MA 02138-5302
Lines: 17

In article <1991Feb21.015322.14213@contact.uucp> egr@contact.uucp (Gordan Palameta) writes:
>Well, I got sick of having ESC next to Left Shift or on F12 on various
>different keyboards, and finally got into the habit of typing  Control-[
>(control open square bracket), which is in fact the ASCII code for ESC.

I've used two classes of terminals where Control-[ did not generate 0x1B.

On one, there was a BACKTAB key where ESC should have been.  The real ESC key
was hidden so cleverly I couldn't find it for a while); so I gave up and tried
Control-[.  It didn't work--I got a backtab, because of the internal remapping
that was being done in the firmware.

On the other, left bracket and right bracket were on the same key, and using
the Control key (with or without shift) would generate Control-], 0x1D.  The
only known way to generate 0x1B on such a keyboard is with the ESC key.

Karl W. Z. Heuer (karl@ima.isc.com or uunet!ima!karl), The Walking Lint