configuring the backspace key, etc. (un-indenting doesn't work with vim)

[Andrew DeFaria]

Mark J. Reed wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 5:21 AM, Jay <jayk123@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> While Andrew's tone is a bit strong/rude, I do agree. The keyboard 
>> should just work.
> And it does. Andrew had a misconfigured vim setup that was getting in 
> the way.
Don't speak for me! I will speak for myself. I misconfigured vim for a 
reason. That reason was that backspace was not performing it's function 
in the first place. I didn't willy nilly go in there and say "Well let 
me add this just because it oughta be fun". Something was broken and I 
was attempting to fix it. What was broken was the natural and normal 
functioning of the backspace key. If that key was working in an expected 
and normal way why the hell would I be in there mucking around?!?

And as I said, the "documentation" was, ahem.... well less than 
instructive in this regard.
>> PC keyboards have been for a very long time now.
> Yes. But, again, you're not always on the local attached keyboard when 
> interacting with a Linux system.
Come on now! 99% of the time you are. 99% of the other OSes get it 
right. Stop making excuses!
> Admittedly, even when not local, 99.9% of the time you'll be using 
> some sort of VT100/ANSI terminal emulator, so a lot of the flexibility 
> of the termcap/terminfo system is overkill at this point. But the 
> underlying abstraction - no matter how you are connected, it looks 
> like a tty to the host software - is still valuable.
I would not consider it valuable if it doesn't perform it's intended and 
labeled (mind you) function.
>> > That's the price of using stuff without understanding it.
>>> Oh man.
>> Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone..
> Fair enough. But I do at least try not to blame "the system" when I 
> screw something up because I didn't know what I was doing...
You would if you admit that it was the system that was screwed up before 
that made you get under the hood in an attempt to fix it in the first 
place! You would if you were open minded enough to admit that it's only 
Unix that suffers this affliction with this specific key.
-- 
Andrew DeFaria <http://defaria.com>
Bureaucracy: a method of turning energy into solid waste.


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