[R] R and xterm

[Bill Simpson]

On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, Ragnar Beer wrote:

> Howdy!
> 
> I have a problem that's similar to one discussed earlier on the list: 
> When not in xterm all the backspace and cursor-movements and stuff 
> are working well. Only when I start R in an xterm window backspace 
> appears as ^H and so on. What can I do?
It is well known that backspace and delete are in general screwed up under
unix, especially under X, and that special efforts have to be made to get
them  as Mac and windows interpret them: delete = delete to
right, backspace=delete to left.

One reason is that many unix guys don't accept that the backspace and
delete keys should have different behaviours. These two keys didn't exist
before PCs, and so unix didn't deal with this issue in the early days.

Anne Baretta wrote a nice page describing some fixes.
Anne's page seems to be gone from the net; a copy is here:
http://turquoise.cs.ucr.edu/keyboard2/keyboard.html

I will say that under RedHat version 6.2 and greater backspace and delete
are OK in console and in xterm under X. Anne's ideas were incorporated
into Debian as well. I don't know what unix you're using, you don't say. I
know that the most recent version of FreeBSD has screwed up keys. If you
are using linux, I would suggest you switch to a distribution with
unbroken keys like RedHat or Debian. Else read Anne's page and do the
fixes.

Bill


-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html
Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe"
(in the "body", not the subject !)  To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch
_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._