F11: xorg decision to disable Ctrl-Alt-Backspace

Gerry Reno greno at verizon.net
Sat Mar 28 18:16:53 UTC 2009


Joonas Sarajärvi wrote:
> 2009/3/28 Gerry Reno <greno at verizon.net>:
>   
>> The traditional  three-keystroke combination of Ctrl-Alt-Backspace 
>> has been
>> 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.
>>     
>
> 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.
>   
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.




>   
>>> 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...
>>>
>>>       
>> 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.
>>     
>
> I haven't probably ever used those commands in Emacs.
>
>
>   
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


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