Decent Unix Editors!! (one man's opinion, anyway)

[James A. Crotinger]

frank at morpheus.UUCP (Frank McPherson) writes:
> One solution (admittedly, not a great one) to the problem of Emacs using
> Delete instead of CTRL-H is to just dump the help functions.  As you
> say, they're next to impossible to use, anyway.

> So, here's what you do to use CTRL-H (more popularly known as Backspace) for
> the purpose it was intended:  add this line to the file .emacs in your
> home directory and it'll map the delete-backward-char function to the
> backspace key on your Amiga.  Incidentally, the old assignment of
> delete-backward-char to the delete key is still around, so you can use
> either one.

> (define-key global-map "\C-h" 'delete-backward-char)

  You don't have to dump help to do this. Just reassign the help key
to something else. For example, the following lines remap the help key
to be the one labeled "HELP" on a Sparcstation keyboard (which sends
the sequence <ESC>[-1z):

  (global-unset-key "\M-[")
  (global-set-key "\e[-1z" help-map)
  (global-set-key "\e[-1z\e[-1z" 'help-for-help)
  (global-set-key "\C-h" 'backward-delete-char-untabify)
  ;(global-set-key "\177" 'delete-char)

To find out what to use to map the Amiga's help key to "help-map", get
into emacs and type <CTL>q followed by the help key. If the help key
is getting sent, it'll show up as text (when using a regular Amiga and
VLT, it comes out as <ESC>Ol (big O little l), so you'd replace \e[-1z
with \eOl).

The last line maps the delete key to do the same thing it does on the
Amiga (delete the character "under" the cursor). Unfortunately the Sun
has the positions of the delete and backspace keys mixed up, which
causes me great frustration, so I commented it out.
--
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James A. Crotinger     Lawrence Livermore Natl Lab // The above views 
jac at moonshine.llnl.gov P.O. Box 808;  L-630    \\ // are mine and are not 
(415) 422-0259         Livermore CA  94550      \\/ necessarily those of LLNL