Re: [Bug-apl] Another option for APL keyboard mapping

[David B. Lamkins]

Fair enough. I'll put high-bit controls on the TODO list along with
alternate prefixes.

On Thu, 2014-10-23 at 14:26 +0800, Elias Mårtenson wrote:
> I have no idea. Probably not. :-) The point, however, is that if there
> is a standard way of doing it, that should be used. And I believe
> there is a most standard way (or am I wrong? I might mis-remember).
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Elias
> 
> On 23 October 2014 14:24, David B. Lamkins <address@hidden> wrote:
>         Interesting. I knew about the high-bit controls, but honestly
>         can't
>         remember the last time I saw a system that used them. Aside
>         from xterm
>         (given appropriate configuration), are high-bit controls used
>         on any of
>         your available platforms?
>         
>         On Thu, 2014-10-23 at 14:09 +0800, Elias Mårtenson wrote:
>         > If you have never seen anything else, then I must assume
>         that you
>         > haven't looked hard enough. :-)  In fact, the usual way was
>         to simply
>         > set the high bit to 1 to indicate Alt. Emacs implemented a
>         workaround
>         > for terminals that did not support this (the Esc-prefix) and
>         many
>         > terminal emulators have adopted this these days, making it
>         full-circle
>         > if you will.
>         >
>         >
>         > Regards,
>         > Elias
>         >
>         > On 23 October 2014 14:06, David B. Lamkins
>         <address@hidden> wrote:
>         >         Thanks, Elias.
>         >
>         >         I was inspired by what I saw coming out of
>         `showkey`, so I
>         >         looked at the
>         >         source and realized that the foundation was very
>         simple. The
>         >         only really
>         >         tricky part was distinguishing between the ANSI CSI
>         (a
>         >         two-character
>         >         prefix of all ANSI cursor and function keys) and the
>         APL `←`
>         >         which is
>         >         identical to the CSI but has nothing following until
>         the next
>         >         key press.
>         >
>         >         Like you, I had a moment where I thought this ought
>         to be
>         >         integrated in
>         >         GNU APL. Then I realized that GNU APL needs to see
>         the Unicode
>         >         representation of the APL characters so that curses
>         can do the
>         >         right
>         >         thing with the cursor keys.
>         >
>         >         That said, I'd be happy to share `akt` as a
>         contribution to
>         >         the
>         >         "keyboards" section of the GNU APL distribution.
>         >
>         >         I don't understand your concern regarding ESC as a
>         prefix. ESC
>         >         prefixing
>         >         has been consistently available in all of the
>         terminal
>         >         emulators I've
>         >         seen in the past decade or more on Macs, PCs and
>         many flavors
>         >         of Linux.
>         >         I'd be surprised if that feature suddenly
>         disappeared.
>         >
>         >         Even if one did encounter a terminal emulator that
>         doesn't map
>         >         Alt to an
>         >         ESC prefix, one may always type the ESC key as a
>         prefix...
>         >
>         >         It'd be easy to allow specification of a different
>         >         single-character
>         >         prefix, but I don't understand the need. What am I
>         missing?
>         >         Something
>         >         having to do with the layout of non-US keyboards...?
>         Non-ANSI
>         >         terminal
>         >         emulators...? Personal preference...?
>         >
>         >         I do plan to look into curses, but that solution has
>         a larger
>         >         "surface
>         >         area". `akt` was just a quick and simple hack to
>         have a
>         >         lightweight
>         >         keyboard mapper while I slowly wrap my head around
>         curses for
>         >         a
>         >         different project.
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         
>         
>         
> 
>