Delete key and two-button mouse on Linux

Richard A. O'Keefe ok at atlas.otago.ac.nz
Thu Feb 15 22:20:58 UTC 2001


I have recently been teaching a 60day intensive C course.
This meant switching back and forth between different operating systems
with the SAME keyboard and the same operating system with DIFFERENT
keyboards, not to mention Emacs' strangely unhelpful stealing of ^H as
the HELP key (this keyboard HAS a help key, why do I need another one?).

On one keyboard that I use with Squeak, the big fat key at the top right
corner of the main block is labelled "Back Space".  On another keyboard
that I use with Squeak, the same key is labelled "Delete".

If they do different things I am going to go nuts.

Please, pretty please, with sugar and LOTS of ice-cream on top,
could you make sure that "straight-out-of-the-box-ready-for-newbies"
Squeak does *NOT* in any way distinguish between BackSpace and Delete?

Ok, my own editor distinguishes between ^D (delete forward character)
and ^H (delete backward character), so I can most definitely see why
people who only have to deal with one keyboard would like to make the
distinction.  If I had only one keyboard to deal with, I'd probably
like that myself.

For what it's worth, I have three machines in my office, all reasonably
popular, with three different keyboards.  None of them have a Windows
key.  But some of the machines in the lecture theatres and labs DO have
a Windows key (which discombobulates this touch typist no end; what
drooling drug-crazed idiot decided that swiping chunks off the space bar
was a good idea? is the ever shrinking space bar the reason why so many
students think it is ok to write code like if(x>y)x=y;else y=x; ?).





More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list