duplicateControlAndAltKeys

Richard A. O'Keefe ok at cs.otago.ac.nz
Fri Oct 31 01:14:48 UTC 2003


Concerning Ctrl-C, which  "Lex Spoon" <lex at cc.gatech.edu> thinks must
be "copy", I would like to point out that on my Solaris box,
	  Cut	  Copy	  Paste	  Delete
Amaya	  Ctrl-W  Ctrl-C  Ctrl-V  Ctrl-D
Netscape  Alt-X   Alt-C   Alt-V	  N/A
Opera	  Ctrl-X  Ctrl-C  Ctrl-V  Del
Emacs     Cut     Copy    Paste   N/A    these are actual keys
dtterm    N/A   Ctrl-Ins Shft-Ins N/A    Ctrl/Shift Insert
dtterm    N/A     Copy    Paste   N/A    alternative keys
... I could go on.

Point is, in my environment, Ctrl-C as "copy" is quite rare, and
certainly a highly non-obvious thing to do when thyere's a key labelled
"Copy".  On the other hand, Ctrl-C as "interrupt" has a long and honourable
history and it would be *extremely* surprising and very hard to cope with if
Ctrl-C did *not* mean "interrupt".

I should say that since Opera was installed on my machine, I have found
a great deal to dislike about its interface, not least the fact that
every other browser I have lets me do "<browser> <possibly relative URL>"
and start up in that URL, while Opera ignores its command-line argument.
So I would, if anything, take "Opera does it" as implying "don't do that."

Let me list the special keys:

    Help
    Stop		Again
    Props		Undo
    Front		Copy
    Open		Paste
    Find		Cut

on X11 systems where these keys exist, it would certainly be nice if
Undo, Front, Copy, Paste, Find, and Cut did the right thing.  Heck,
it would be lovely if Help did something sensible.

But above all, it would be hard to live with if Ctrl-C did NOT mean
"interrupt".



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