Re: [Fwd: escape key]

[Stephen Clark <Stephen.Clark@seclark.us>]

Jan Engelhardt wrote:

>On Dec 16 2006 08:45, Pavel Machek wrote:
>  
>
>>>Two escapes works now. :-)
>>>      
>>>
>>Actually could we fix our consoles, somehow, to make esc usable?
>>Having important key like esc unusable on consoles is quite ugly.
>>    
>>
>
>It's something between a misdesign and a misconfiguration of the ESC key.
>
>In other words, many unices make ESC generate ^[, the general
>terminal escape character that is _also_ generated by keys like "up",
>^[[A.
>
>MS-DOS, or rather QBASIC's, Turbo BASIC's and other implementation of
>keys, does not have this "bug": here ESC generates "\x1B" and "up"
>generates "\x00H" IIRC. There is no key defined to generate "\x00".
>=> All fits nicely.
>
>So I see two steps:
>
> - making ESC generate something else than ^[, or making function
>   keys do something else
>
> - fixing the terminfo description and the xterms
>
> - possibly creating a new termtype ("linux2" or "xterm2") so as to
>   not tamper with compatibility
>
>Then text-console graphic applications (ncurses, slang, etc.) would
>not need to wait the defined one second for an escape sequence to
>complete.
>
>HOWEVER, unix people probably _had a reason_ to make ESC generate
>part of what function keys do. Should my UP key go broke, I could
>still - though probably tedious - reproduce it by hitting the three
>keys ESC [ A. Problem, as pointed out, is that ESC has long been used
>by the majority of people back then for something else than doing
>terminal sequences by hand: DOS, apps, games, Windows GUIs, and,
>I suppose, even X11.
>
>
>
>	-`J'
>  
>
Hi,

do man ascii - ESC is 0x1b.
Thats what the esc key should generate - it sometimes echoed as ^[ 
because the [ = 0x5b

Steve

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