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From: macrakis@harvard.UUCP (Stavros Macrakis)
Newsgroups: net.info-terms,net.internat
Subject: Re: In search of a sane keyboard standard
Message-ID: <929@harvard.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 7-May-86 12:55:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: harvard.929
Posted: Wed May  7 12:55:35 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 9-May-86 09:44:26 EDT
References: <2071@cbosgd.UUCP> <245@myrias.UUCP> <859@uwvax.UUCP> <247@spar.UUCP> <1314@oddjob.UUCP>
Organization: Aiken Comp. Lab., Harvard
Lines: 40
Keywords: keyboard, standard, ANSI
Xref: watmath net.info-terms:916 net.internat:272
Summary: Meta is a problem.

In response to the proposal for keyboard standardization, several
people lamented the absence of a Meta key.  (See below)  

Although I certainly sympathize (being an Emacs user from way back),
the use of the top bit to transmit additional control information is a
bad idea: on the one hand, this bit is currently sometimes used for
parity checking; on the other, all extended character set proposals
use it -- as should be particularly clear to those on net.internat.

Of course, this all started because the original ANSI control
characters were being unused for their standard functions.  Perhaps
the way to go is to standardize on the notion of `bucky bits' (that
is, characters modified by keys depressed simultaneously), but to
define a protocol within Ascii for transmitting them as
multi-character escape sequences (e.g. instead of transmitting 210 for
control-meta-i, transmit ESC CMP I, where CMP is an escape code
meaning control-meta-prefix).

	-s

cmt@myrias.UUCP (Chris Thomson)
>    2. No meta key is specified.  It should be optional, and below the left

dave@uwvax.UUCP (Dave Cohrs)
> 4) Some people like a META key. 

faunt@spar.UUCP (Doug Faunt)
> Where do the META keys go?...I want my bucky bits!

mrl@oddjob.UUCP (Scott R. Anderson)
>... the Mac does have an OPTION (i.e. META) key, which I believe 
> is an up-and-coming feature
-- 
	-s


Stavros Macrakis		Macrakis@Harvard.{Harvard.EDU,ARPA,uucp,csnet}
Harvard Aiken Lab 111			@Harvunxh.bitnet
33 Oxford Street
Cambridge, MA 02138