Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!lll-winken!uunet!yale!spolsky-joel From: spolsky-joel@CS.YALE.EDU (Joel Spolsky) Newsgroups: comp.emacs Subject: Re: Grrr... uEmacs 3.10 doesn't work under Xenix Keywords: uEMACS 3.10 Message-ID: <56803@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> Date: 12 Apr 89 23:55:39 GMT References: <56344@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> <9313@j.cc.purdue.edu> <13576@steinmetz.ge.com> <588@ispi.UUCP> Sender: root@yale.UUCP Reply-To: spolsky-joel@CS.YALE.EDU (Joel Spolsky) Organization: Yale University Computer Science Dept, New Haven CT 06520-2158 Lines: 53 In article <588@ispi.UUCP> jbayer@ispi.UUCP (Jonathan Bayer) writes: >In article <13576@steinmetz.ge.com> davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes: >> I think we may have failed to make it clear that support for ANSI >>keysequences is needed in UNIX versions. Termcap support won't do it. I >>posted fixes for this in every version from 3.7? to 3.10beta and none of >>them ever got picked up. > >Why? What is the matter with reading the termcap entry and interpreting >the keys according to the termcap info? Jonathan, I'm going to have to come out against this one. TERMCAP was never a good solution to keyboard problems. VERY FEW terminals are correctly set up in standard /etc/termcap files, even if they were, uEmacs 3.10 wants to use non-standard termcap entries for home, end, pgdown, etc. There is no question that TERMCAP is not robust enough or well enough support for keyboards, especially in Xenix. >Why must the keys for ANSI be >hardcoded into the program, therefore increasing the program size and >complexity? Some argument. The size of the uEmacs executable jumped about 50% from 3.9 to 3.10. A whole lot of difference a few ansi codes is going to make. >I have been able to make version 3.10 work with all the >keys on my keyboard by simply installing the appropriate modification to >my termcap file. Humph. I don't see why every poor joe slob that wants to use microEmacs should have to (1) figure out that his function keys dont work (2) find the source to uEmacs, (3) find that obscure comment in tcap.c about the termcap (4) change the /etc/termcap file. Chances are most users won't get to stage 3, and can't change the /etc/termcap without the system administrator. Assuming that they understand these things. Basically it's gotten twice as hard to get uEmacs to work. Essentially, as most Unix develpers have figured out, TERMCAP is NEVER a realiable place to look for keyboard information. Especially in Xenix where many users don't even set up or use the TERMCAP env. variable at all. A more reasonable solution, and the one that GNU Emacs uses, is to make it simple and reasonable to bind functions to the ANSI sequences, instead of the unnecessary uEmacs step of binding to hypothetical key names like FN< and FN>. +----------------+----------------------------------------------------------+ | Joel Spolsky | bitnet: spolsky@yalecs.bitnet uucp: ...!yale!spolsky | | | internet: spolsky@cs.yale.edu voicenet: 203-436-1483 | +----------------+----------------------------------------------------------+ #include