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Re: emacs -nw keypad, tpu-edt.el, and C-h


Ken Brown:
> A separate issue that has arisen in this thread is that when emacs runs
> in a cygwin terminal [*], it sees C-h as DEL instead of as the help key.
> Can someone familiar with cygwin terminals help with this? ÂI'm speculating
> again (bad habit), but it seems that the keycodes are being processed before
> they reach emacs, so that C-h becomes indistinguishable from the Backspace
> key.

Careful, you're straying into a pseudo-religious warzone here. :)

There's an ancient and pointless argument about whether the Backspace
key should send ^H (0x08) or ^? (0x7F). See here for the whole sorry
saga:

http://www.ibb.net/~anne/keyboard.html

Inevitably, Linux distributions are split on this issue, with Debian
using ^? and Redhat using ^H. Cygwin is in the ^H camp, i.e. all its
terminals send ^H by default. xterm, rxvt, and mintty can be
configured to send ^? instead though, which, as you note, is
particular useful with emacs as it leaves Ctrl+H available as the help
shortcut.

Andy

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