Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!lll-winken!uunet!crdgw1!steinmetz!davidsen
From: davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (Wm. E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: Grrr... uEmacs 3.10 doesn't work under Xenix
Keywords: uEMACS 3.10
Message-ID: <13592@steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 12 Apr 89 19:35:36 GMT
References: <56344@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> <9313@j.cc.purdue.edu> <13576@steinmetz.ge.com> <588@ispi.UUCP>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 27

In article <588@ispi.UUCP> jbayer@ispi.UUCP (Jonathan Bayer) writes:

| Why?  What is the matter with reading the termcap entry and interpreting
| the keys according to the termcap info?  Why must the keys for ANSI be
| hardcoded into the program, therefore increasing the program size and
| complexity?  I have been able to make version 3.10 work with all the

  For someone on one machine, who is root, changing termcaps is just
fine. When running on a number of machines for which you may not have
permission to change the /etc/termcap file, and when you have two years
of accumulated emacs macros, you would like to not reinvent the world.

| and being able to use whatever function keys are available knowing that
| their function will be the same.  I think that the current solution is
| much better than a hardcoded one.

  This is not in keeping with the portable approach. You could just as
well decide the VMS is better than UNIX so pull support out for UNIX.
There are a lot of people who have been using memacs in one mode who
would like to continue. It would be better to have one set of changes
installed by the author than a group of changes done by various people.
The VT100 option for keystrokes is just another option like AMIGA or
IBMPC. It shouldn't require taking one useful thing out to add another.
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@crd.GE.COM)
  {uunet | philabs}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me