<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" http-equiv="Content-Type"> </head> <body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> Joonas Sarajärvi wrote: <blockquote cite="mid66ec675b0903281055m4d3517b3y1f3eedb70e7e1808@mail.gmail.com" type="cite"> <pre wrap="">2009/3/28 Gerry Reno <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:greno@verizon.net"><greno@verizon.net></a>: </pre> <blockquote type="cite">The traditional three-keystroke combination of Ctrl-Alt-Backspace has been <pre wrap="">working successfully for decades. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this keysequence. It is one of the most unlikely keysequences that a general X user is ever going to hit accidentally. It is only the tiny Emacs community with their very similar keystroke combinations that has ever had any problems with accidentally tripping this keystroke combination. And it's not fair to the general Xorg community that a historical well-understood and expected default should be disabled all in the interest of one tiny subcommunity. </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""> My support for support the X.org developers' decision isn't due to my Emacs usage. I just think it's a better design to not have the Zap function enabled as default. I think leaving the zap function disabled is very much in line with the general character of Fedora. In past, we have many times replaced old, de-facto ways of doing things with new, innovative solutions and decision. In Fedora 10, the default vt for X was changed from vt 1 to vt 7, despite many arguments similar to yours, and despite that it could potentially confuse some experienced users. Especially now that this isn't even a Fedora decision but an upstream one, it would in my opinion seem a bit odd if Fedora did override that decision. The X developers seem to think that the system should work so well that there would be no need for a magic key combo for killing the server. I think that's quite optimistic and forward-looking, which is mindset that Fedora also happens to follow quite often. </pre> </blockquote> The change regarding the default vt made sense since it made the whole vt keystroke sequence more sensible. The change with regard to default setting for Ctrl-Alt-Backspace does not make sense. The default setting has not been causing anyone any problems outside of the tiny Emacs community. And the Emacs community as I said can create their own special xorg.conf file to deal with their special keystroke combination conflict. And please, Xorg changing the default is not some forward-looking thing in any way. It is nothing more than a special interest implementation for a tiny subcommunity that ends up impacting sysadmins and creating additional work for them and increases demands on time and resources. <blockquote cite="mid66ec675b0903281055m4d3517b3y1f3eedb70e7e1808@mail.gmail.com" type="cite"> <pre wrap=""> </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap="">I don't know any perfect solutions, but in my opinion, it is good that some of the most obtrusive shortcuts are already (possibly) getting a non-default status. While I haven't lost any important work due to X.org zapping, I fail to see why a modern graphics system should have many keyboard shortcuts itself in such prominent places. I am also an Emacs user, though I haven't yet figured what control in Emacs is close to ctrl-alt-backspace. Maybe it's the Finnish layout that has something positioned more favourably... </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap="">Try Ctrl-Alt-End or Ctrl-Alt-\. Emacs users can easily mistakenly type Ctrl-Alt-Backspace when attempting these keystrokes especially on laptops. But again, that doesn't mean we need to change default behaviors. What it means is that the Emacs community needs to prepare special xorg.conf entries for their purpose of disabling Ctrl-Alt-Backspace for them and not pushing a huge change on the massive overall Xorg community. </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""> I haven't probably ever used those commands in Emacs. </pre> </blockquote> Well there are plenty of Emacs users who do use those commands and who are having the conflict problem with Ctrl-Alt-Backspace. Regards, Gerry </body> </html>