Re: ESCAPE key - black magic :-)

carsinfo!carsmax!bryan@uceng.uc.edu (Bryan Klopfenstein) writes: >How can all these other programs work so well under what appear to be >the same constraints you explain above? Most, rely on the timing. A sensible terminal handling package will, when when reading an <esc> in its input, wait for a period of time (dependent on baud rate of terminal) to see whether other characters follow. If more characters follow soon enough and make up a valid function key sequence, they will be treated as that function key, otherwise they will be treated as individual characters, beginning with the <esc>. A notably horrid implementation by Lotus waits for ages. You hit escape in that package and what appears to be ages later it eventually decides that no other characters have arrived, so it'll process the escape! Thankfully, the delay by most packages is about 3 orders of magnitude less the Lotus' method. -- _--_|\\ Craig Macbride <lhscmc@luxor.latrobe.edu.au> / \\ <s900387@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au> \\_.--.*/ v