From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 11:08:12 +0200
From: elliott Elliott.Hughes@genedata.com
Subject: [9fans] Questions
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 62e9f4a2-eac8-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025
Message-ID: <19970911090812.NnYUxS6J5zeOQL4GWGqxV7pZHJtFpK0zknOadM3JTTk@z>

rob@plan9.bell-labs.com wrote:
> 
> > In these internationalized days, shouldn't the arrows send unicode
> > arrow chars?
> 
> Certainly not.  The arrow keys are control characters; the arrow
> characters are printable glyphs.  This is like suggesting CR print
> as a little down-and-to-the-left arrow.

That's nonsense. The keys are what we choose to interpret them as. The
"Return" key is a control key because that's the convention. The key
with "W" painted on it is not because that's the convention.

As I see it, if the arrow keys aren't going to be used as distinct
control keys then it makes perfect sense to have them output Unicode
arrow characters. It might not be terribly useful, but we could use <-
for assignment and -> to separate guards from commands, for example.
Which is a lot more sensible than sending 16_80.

-- 
Elliott Hughes - GeneData AG, Postfach 254, CH-4016 Basel, Switzerland
mailto:elliott.hughes@genedata.com  http://users.ch.genedata.com/~enh/