Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!ima!haddock!karl
From: karl@haddock.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: gnumacs bindings
Message-ID: <1239@haddock.ISC.COM>
Date: Thu, 24-Sep-87 23:55:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: haddock.1239
Posted: Thu Sep 24 23:55:53 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 26-Sep-87 14:43:42 EDT
References: <3590005@hpindda.HP.COM> <8709181153.AA08300@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> <636@unmvax.unm.edu> <2506@xanth.UUCP>
Reply-To: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Organization: Interactive Systems, Boston
Lines: 20

In article <2506@xanth.UUCP> kyle@xanth.UUCP (Kyle Jones) writes:
>Here at ODU we have both DEL and BS bound to delete-backward-char, and we
>still have a help key: C-\.

I dislike having things bound to any of the non-alphabetic control characters,
because terminal manufacturers can't agree on where those keys belong, or what
keys you have to press to get the control characters.  The terminal I'm using
now has backslash between Left-Shift and Z; I've gotten used to it, but I have
problems when I try to use a normal terminal.  It's not even universal that
CTRL-\ generates C-\, but exceptions are rare these days.  (C-@, C-^, and C-_
are more troublesome.)

>C-h may be mnemonic but I simply could not tolerate hitting a key labelled
>BACKSPACE three times in succession and getting a screenful of text

My solution to this problem was to rebind the BACKSPACE key in the terminal
itself.  (This terminal isn't a total loss.)  So for me, the only way to
generate C-h is to hit CTRL-H, and of course when I do so I mean "help".

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