> Fortunately, I run NetBSD, an operating system that acknowledges the
> indisputable fact that keyboards *have* no inherent nature.

A novice of the temple once approached the Chief Priest with a
question. "Master, does Emacs have the Buddha nature?" the novice
asked. The Chief Priest had been in the temple for many years and
could be relied upon to know these things. He thought for several
minutes before replying, "I don't see why not. It's got bloody well
everything else."

> > [I'm one of those weird 80x24 glass TTY types who actually uses Ctrl+H
> > as BackSpace (and Ctrl+I as TAB) because I know precisely where the
> > damned Control key is more often than I know where the BackSpace key
> > is (never used Ctrl+[ for ESC, though, for some reason -- maybe it's
> > because H and I are more centrally located)...]
> 
> This seems like an extreme reaction.   

Well, I often observe such behaviors in my own use of keyboards.  For
me at least, it's not so much conscious caring as the result of
conditioning by the use of various different systems and keyboards
over the years.  If you do something, and it "hurts", you stop doing
it and learn other ways to accomplish what you want to do.

As best I can tell, I now sometimes use Ctrl-I to mean
"tab-to-tab-stop" (but always use the real TAB key for other
functions, like completion and/or forms navigation) because I spent a
fair amount of time in a digital design class during my last semester
of college hacking on PAL programs using Data General terminals which
put a key labeled ESC where most keyboards have a TAB key..

.. which reminds me, I've been meaning to whack wscons to be able to
support the equivalent of PCVT_META_ESC for a while, so that using the
console no longer conditions me to not use the META key..

					- Bill