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From: Mitch.Bradley@ENG.SUN.COM
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: KEY and EKEY
Message-ID: <9106020318.AA26997@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 30 May 91 02:00:13 GMT
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Reply-To: Mitch.Bradley%ENG.SUN.COM@SCFVM.GSFC.NASA.GOV
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My current thinking is that EKEY could be eliminated, and KEY should
be defined to return a *number*, not a character.

There should be a constant (or perhaps an environment query) for
MAX-CHARACTER .  If the number returned by KEY is less than MAX-CHARACTER# ,
then it is a character in the implementation-defined character set.  If the
number is outside that range, it represents an event (function key, whatever)
in an implementation-defined event space.  The crucial point is that the
set of valid characters is well-defined subset of the set of events, and
it is possible for a program to test whether or not the thing returned
by KEY is or is not a character.  Presumably, a standard program would
discard non-character events, or pass them to a system-specific event
handler routine.

What do you folks think about this?

Mitch.Bradley@Eng.Sun.COM