Subject: Future Pine enhancement suggestion

From: [email-masked] (Jamie Royer)
Date: 25 Mar 96 17:14:38 PST

Would it be possible to allow keys to be remapped?  I believe I have
seen responses saying it must be system independent.  What if a 
supplementary program converted a text file to a binary file?  Here
is a suggestion:

Create terminal definition files in the form:
      [xterm]
      ; Left side : Name of key (excluding control keys).
      ; Right side: Key sequence associated/generated by the key.
      Tab=\011
      Return=\015
      Backspace=^H
      Esc=\e
      Left=\e[D
      F1=\e[11~

      [Pine]
      ; Left side : an internal code used by Pine.
      ; Right side: a short name assigned to the internal code.
      1000=Show Keys
      1001=Help
      2000=Send Mail

      [Pine-xterm]
      ; Map Pine key (left side) to terminal key (right side).
      Show Keys=^K
      Send Mail=^X
      Mark=^^
      Mark=Esc Esc ^
      Right=Right

When the user presses "Show Keys", they see a context-sensitive help
screen.  If window cannot fit on screen, allow scrolling:
   +-+---------------------------------------------------------------+
   |^| Show Keys          ^K           Send Mail              ^X     |
   +-+ Mark               ^^           Help                   F1     |
   | |                    Esc Esc ^    Refresh                ^L     |
   | | Justify            ^J           PrevPage               -      |
   +-+ Left               Left         Right                  Right  |
   |v| < etc > < etc >                                               |
   +-+---------------------------------------------------------------+

Advantages are:
   - Portability is maintained.
   - Language independent (more or less).
   - Keys can be re-mapped to work with more terminals.
   - Keys can be re-mapped to be similar to other products.
   - Keys can be removed from the map if sys admin wants to disable
     them.
   - Terminal definitions can be shared between applications (Pilot,
     Pine, Pico).

To improve speed, this key map could be "compiled" into structures that
Pine could read using C binary read.  These files could be placed in
a Pine search path.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jamie Royer                         Tel:    (604) 775-2879
Senior Programmer                   Fax:    (604) 775-2880
GAEA Management & Consulting Ltd.   E-Mail: [email-masked]
Burnaby, BC, Canada
----------------------------------------------------------------------
         My opinions may be wrong, but at least they're my own.

---

From: David L Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Mar 1996 15:22:11 -0800 (PST)

>From experience with other applications, we have come to the
conclusion that keyboard remapping is far too much of a support
problem to be worth the small gain in functionality and convenience.
I have not seen any arguments yet to sway my opinion...

|\ |  |\/|  David L. Miller    [email-masked]  (206) 685-6240
|/ |_ |  |  Software Engineer, Pine Development Team   (206) 685-4045 (FAX)
University of Washington, Networks & Distributed Computing, JE-20
4545 15th Ave NE, Seattle WA 98105, USA