[9fans] Questions

[David Hogan dhog@lore.plan9.cs.su.oz.au]

Elliott.Hughes@genedata.com wrote:
> 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.

Yes, but the suggestion which spawned this debate was that programs
such as 8 1/2 which interpret the down arrow as the "view" key should
interpret the arrow glyphs as control characters (after matching
modifications to the console driver).  As Rob points out, this is a
bad idea since it makes it impossible for a user to insert literal
arrow glyphs.  Imagine that the return key generated the "r" character,
and that 8 1/2 "knew" that that meant "return".  Then you'd look pretty
silly trying to run a command with "r" in it.

Unicode defines certain characters which can be used as "control"
characters.  Attempting to use others this way would be a mistake.

> 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.

I actually like the way that all three of the bottom row of arrow
keys act as the view key; one doesn't need to be so precise.  Given
that "view" is a frequently used operation, this makes a lot of
sense (notice how shift, space, return, backspace, etc are wider
on most keyboards; that's because they are used more often).

Of course, you're free to redefine the keys in your own copy
of the source!  Me, I'm looking for something to map those blasted
Win 95 keys to.  Does Unicode have a hangman's noose character?
Or a skull and crossbones?  I guess there's always the frowning
face character...