From xemacs-m  Sun May 25 11:40:56 1997
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To: "Karl M. Hegbloom" <karlheg@inetarena.com>
Cc: <xemacs-beta@xemacs.org>
Subject: Re: del/backspace: forwarded message from Christian Schwarz
References: <199705251207.FAA18475@bittersweet.inetarena.com>
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From: Gary.Foster@Corp.Sun.COM (Gary D. Foster)
Date: 25 May 1997 09:41:11 -0700
In-Reply-To: "Karl M. Hegbloom"'s message of Sun, 25 May 1997 05:07:06 -0700
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> 
> Let me summarize (and please correct me if I'm wrong):
> 
> 1) everyone agrees that "Backspace" (the "<--" key) should delete to the
>    left
> 2) that "Delete" (the "del" key, or "Entf" for germans :-) should delete
>    the key the cursor is standing on
> 3) ^H (that is Ctrl-H) should act like "Backspace"
> 4) except within emacs, where ^H should bring up the online help
> 
> Correct?
> 
> Does someone know if this is possible? If not, I suggest to drop rule 4).

No.  This is not correct... it's doable, but the default keybindings
for XEmacs shouldn't be changed around.  Right now, pretty much
everyone that uses XEmacs expects the following behavior:

1) BS erases to the left, except in tty mode where it brings up help

2) DEL erases to the left also

3) ^H brings up help.

This is the way it should stay, as far as *default* configurations
go.  The problem arises in that it's non-trivial to _uniformly_ rebind 
these three keys.  While I agree that anyone should be able to rebind
any of these keys to do anything they want, and I am working on fixing 
it to make it easy to do this, I do not agree that the defaults should 
be changed around.  That LJ article (and debian Linux in general)
assumes that the world is using a PC 101 key keyboard which just
simply is not the case.  We have to make allowances for those people
(I think Hrvoje is one of them) who don't even HAVE backspace keys,
and we have to make sure that it's useable out of the box and not
broken in any way, shape, or form.  It's got to be *useable* without
any customizations... but it's also got to be customizable to change
it to do whatever you want it to do.

> Anyways, I'm talking about the "default kbd configuration" of a Debian
> system. Everyone is free to override this with his own meaning of some
> keys. 

Why on earth should we change the global defaults and inflict "debian 
keybindings" on everyone and then make them change them around?
Debian is a small subset of the XEmacs user community.  Perhaps I'm
not understanding what you're proposing here, but it sounds awfully
like you're proposing changing around all the global defaults for
XEmacs keybindings just to fit the Debian crowd and then saying that
all the non-Debians can just "override" them.  Uh uh.  No.

> For example, we could ask the user at installation time of the emacs
> package, whether he/she wants to
> 
>   a) ^H _and_ Backspace to bring up the help screen 
> or
>   b) ^H _and_ Backspace delete the character to the left
> 
> Of course, some workaround we be good.
> 
> > 	Change thingslike this around, and see another jihad erupt ;-)
> 
> Hey, I'm not going to give up that early! 

Are you talking about a script that gets run on installation of the
DEBIAN package, or one that gets run on installation of XEmacs in
general?  Because the former is none of my concern and the latter is
crazy.  Why not just include a sample .emacs with various things
commented out and descriptive comments describing how each setting
works and what it does?

Something like:

(custom-set-variables
;; uncomment the next line to make the DEL key act like a PC delete key
;;  '(delete-erases-forward t)
;; uncomment the next line to prevent BS from invoking help
;;  '(backspace-is-control-h nil)
...
...
...

It presupposes that we are actually able to settle on and fix the
behavior of XEmacs such that customization like this is possible, and
I'm not even sure we've all agreed on how that is to be done either so 
don't take any of the above settings as gospel or necessarily even as
an opinion on how I think they should be done (I'm staying carefully
out of the rwar aspects and just coding so everyone put your
flamethrowers down, please <smile>).  I just want to disabuse you of
the notion that we should change all the defaults and then expect
non-debians to change them back.  That's crazy.

Of course, it's quite possible that I've completely misunderstood what 
you're asking for here, as well and if so please disregard.

-- Gary F.

