From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Sun, 23 Sep 2001 16:42:11 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Sun, 23 Sep 2001 16:42:01 -0400 Received: from [132.68.115.2] ([132.68.115.2]:49280 "EHLO leeor.math.technion.ac.il") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Sun, 23 Sep 2001 16:41:47 -0400 Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2001 23:41:11 +0300 From: "Nadav Har'El" To: Alan Cox Cc: zefram@fysh.org, torvalds@transmeta.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [PATCH] tty canonical mode: nicer erase behaviour Message-ID: <20010923234111.A16873@leeor.math.technion.ac.il> In-Reply-To:

Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2i In-Reply-To: ; from alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk on Sun, Sep 23, 2001 at 09:05:56PM +0100 Hebrew-Date: 7 Tishri 5762 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Sun, Sep 23, 2001, Alan Cox wrote about "Re: [PATCH] tty canonical mode: nicer erase behaviour": > Erase character policy is precisely defined by posix. Fix problem apps. > Debian set a policy on this a long time back and have done wonders since Just too bad Debian's policy is to make ^? the erase character - pretty much the opposite of what most Unix users used before that. Pretending ASCII BS (^H) doesn't exist any more is an interesting exercise, but it isn't easy to change habits and standards that existed for a couple of decades... The same problem exists for the ASCII DEL (^?) which was also used in many Unix systems, but usually as a intr key, not a "delete-forward" type of thing... [see http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-opersys.html#s10.8 for the mentioned Debian policy] Debian's solution isn't a silver bullet, in my opinion... It just means the ^H/^? confusion stops being a problem in a stand-alone system (if all your applications and configuration files come as defaults from Debian, they are consistent) but it just increased the mess when you log in from one system type to another (one of them being none-Linux Unix)... P.S. The only relation any of this has to the kernel is the behavior of the "cooked" line discipline, as Zefram already said. I think I like his erase2 idea better than his forget-the-difference-between-^H-and-^? idea. However, this former idea will work well only if applications like ssh, for example, will know how to propegate erase2, and they currently don't. But this is again not really a kernel issue... -- Nadav Har'El | Sunday, Sep 23 2001, 7 Tishri 5762 nyh@math.technion.ac.il |----------------------------------------- Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Experience is what causes a person to http://nadav.harel.org.il |make new mistakes instead of old ones.