Re: gnome-terminal delete/backspace mess

[Robey Pointer <robey lag net>]

Owen Taylor wrote:

> Suprisingly a huge percentage of bug reports we get at Red Hat are
> about GNOME terminal -- "the least of the end-user applications"
>
> Terminal windows should "just work", just as much as any other
> application should just work.
>
> There are several problems with the current interface:
>
> * No user is going to have the faintest clue what the config options
>   actually do. By adding "Del generates delete/^H", we made the 
>   search for random fooling around and trying to get things to
>   work even bigger.
>
> * If you log in to a remote terminal and change it, you've screwed
>   your local terminals. Yes, if you are clever enough, you probably
>   can use terminal classes to get around this, but I've never had
>   much luck with them. The interfaction between default settings,
>   terminal classes and session-saved settings gets very confusing.

I just looked at the preferences panel.  I've been using xterms for over 
a decade and I couldn't make any sense out of them.  Perhaps the real 
problem is the descriptions of the fields?

I have "Swap delete/backspace" checked, but my terminal is sending ^? 
when I hit the backspace, so they're really NOT switched!  Confusion 
abounds.  Does this mean that the normal (unchecked) behavior is to send 
^H?  Yep, it appears so.  So the meaning of the checkbox is exactly 
opposite of the descriptive text.

And then there's an option "Delete generates DEL/^H" which I won't check 
because I can't figure out which one it means.  If it's checked, does 
Delete "generate" DEL?  Or does it generate ^H?  Or will it send both? 
How can an either/or option be a checkbox?

What about one single option: "Send ^H for backspace (for older 
terminals)" -- and it only takes effect on the terminal you set it on.

robey



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