filepro keys

[Bill Campbell]

On Wed, Mar 27, 2013, davidrottkamp at echoes.net wrote:
>Hi
>

>Can the keys filepro recognizes as ESC ??? SAVE and DEL ??? break be
>switched .  I know I can change the SAVE key value in termcap and I know I
>can use stty intr ???^[??? to make the ESC key mean break to filepro but
>when I do the stty inrt ???^[??? it causes other keys that depend on the
>ESC sequence to fail such as arrow keys and function keys.

(the ??? above are characters not interpreted properly in the
mutt mail program on Linux).

You can change the actions and corresponding labels by editing
the appropriate termcap files.  The DEL key is different in that
it's not a proper function key, but generates in interrupt signal
which is handled differently.

The DEL key for interrupt was common on Radio Shack computers
eons ago, and was used for the same thing as CTRL-C is on most
other *nix system, MS-DOS, etc.  While many terminal emulation
programs can generate the DEL interrupt characters as used by
SCO, I really think it's a Bad Idea(tm) as they don't work when
using xterm and similar terminal programs.  I just have the
command "stty intr '^C'" in my .profile or other startup scripts
to set this.

The FilePro <ESC><ESC> to Save is a vestige of them doing it
right as a single <ESC> really is only the start of a command
sequence.  Microsoft decided to use it alone to escape from
functions which complicated terminal programs that need to
interpret function keys as they have to set some time limit to
say that the command hasn't been completed so the <ESC> is meant
as a command in itself.

Many of the dumb terminals common in the '80s had 4 function keys
immediately over the numeric keypad, PF1, PF2, PF3, and PF4 where
they were easily reached when doing heads-down data entry.  The
IBM PC keyboards replaced these with NumLock, and other less
useful keys.  When I wrote the keyboard handling routines for my
accounting software, I chose to use the navigation keys in the
cluster to the left of the keypad so PageDown is used to Save as
it's closest and easiest to reach with one hand.  I use the
Insert and Delete keys as one would expect so the operator
doesn't have to reach for the function keys to handle these
functions.

Personally I liked the way Scripsit did things with mnemonic key
codes <ctrl-I> == insert, <ctrl-d> == delete, etc.  The Radio
Shack Model I2/16/6000 keyboards put function keys around the
keypad to make these easy for one hand input.  This was a nice
idea, but as usual had unintended consequences as Scripsit for
the Model II and programs like WordStar used <ctrl-S> for
something or other -- the XOFF character that caused serial
connections to stop waiting for an XON <ctrl-Q> to resume.  I
don't know how many calls I got shortly after people started
using Scripsit on Xenix whose terminals stopped working.

Bill
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