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From: dad@mit-vax.UUCP (David Duff)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: Help with Red Ryder
Message-ID: <319@mit-vax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 30-Apr-86 15:10:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: mit-vax.319
Posted: Wed Apr 30 15:10:22 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 3-May-86 02:45:38 EDT
References: <384@druhi.UUCP>
Reply-To: dad@mit-vax.UUCP (David Duff)
Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 25
Summary: Some option keys are "hard wired"

In article <384@druhi.UUCP> cosmos@druhi.UUCP (GuestRA) writes:
>I just downloaded Red Ryder 8.0 to try it out.  One problem I am having is
>that using the Option keys as the control key doesn't seem to work right for
>some control keys.  For example, ^E must be typed twice to be sent to the
>host.  This problem does not occur when using Command as the control key.
>Also, a macro programmed with ^E works just fine.  Other control characters
>that don't work right include ^N.  Any clues?  Do I have something
>configured wrong or is this a bug?

The problem is that option-e, option-i, option-u, and option-n, are,
in some sense, hard-wired to produce special symbols in combination
with other characters.  Someone with more knowledge of internals could
probably tell you more about where this mapping takes place, but
apparently it is at a pretty low level, and can not be overridden with
standard keyboard mapping techniques.  

For example, it you want to type a letter with a sideways colon over
it (umlaut, or whatever), you type option-u letter (where letter is
one of {a, e, i, o, u, y}).  Likewise for the little hat (caret) with
option-i, or tilde with option-n.  This was done to give the mac
international capability, obviously.  I wouldn't be surprised to hear
that the keyboard itself actually waits before sending the character
after one of these keys.  

There's a partial answer, anybody got any more detail than that?