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Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 00:59:32 GMT
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From: Tomasz Cholewo <tjchol01@mecca.spd.louisville.edu>
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To: XEmacs-Beta Mailing List <xemacs-beta@xemacs.org>
Subject: help-char (was Re: C-h/backspace/etc)
In-Reply-To: <bcilo4as75z.fsf@corp.Sun.COM>
X-Mailer: VM 6.31 under 20.2 XEmacs Lucid

Gary Foster wrote:

> 3) globally bind C-h to 'backward-delete-char in tty mode.  We could
>    do this a couple of different ways:
> 	* hard bind it in all cases with a global-set-key and rely on
> 	  M-h generating help instead of C-h from now on.
> 	* Only bind it in tty mode by wrappering the help function and 
> 	  calling backward-delete-whatever if in tty mode.
<snip>
> The C-h/help problem is a completely different (albeit related) issue
> than the delete erasure direction and is going to be just as much of a 
> pain in the rear to solve.

It is very closely related to the `help-char' problem.  An amazing
amount of code assumes that it holds a char value and gets a keystroke
using `(read-char)'.  According to the lispref:

 - Variable: help-char
     The value of this variable is the help character--the character
     that XEmacs recognizes as meaning Help.  By default, it is the
     character `?\^H' (ASCII 8), which is `C-h'.  When XEmacs reads this
     character, if `help-form' is non-`nil' Lisp expression, it
     evaluates that expression, and displays the result in a window if
     it is a string.

     `help-char' can be a character or a key description such as `help'
     or `(meta h)'.

Unfortunately setting `help-char' to "\M-h" causes XEmacs to fail on
several occasions. One especially annoying case is prim/userlock.el.  I
cleaned it up for several packages some time ago but it requires a more
global solution.

Maybe we should start over with a new `help-key' variable to avoid
further confusion?  Another possibility is to use '?' as the default
help key for all minibuffer prompts.

-- Tomasz Cholewo

