NAME
keyboard – how to type characters |
DESCRIPTION
Keyboards are idiosyncratic. It should be obvious how to type
ordinary ASCII characters, backspace, tab, escape, and newline.
In Plan 9, the key labeled Return or Enter generates a newline
(0x0A); if there is a key labeled Line Feed, it generates a carriage
return (0x0D); Plan 9 eschews CRLFs. All control
characters are typed in the usual way; in particular, control–J
is a line feed and control–M a carriage return. On the PC and some
other machines, the key labeled Caps Lock acts as an additional
control key. The delete character (0x7F) may be generated by a different key, one near the extreme upper right of the keyboard. On the Next it is the key labeled * (not the asterisk above the 8). On the SLC and Sparcstation 2, delete is labeled Num Lock (the key above Backspace labeled Delete functions as an additional backspace key). On the other keyboards, the key labeled Del or Delete generates the delete character. The view character (0x80), used by rio(1), acme(1), and sam(1), causes windows to scroll forward. It is generally somewhere near the lower right of the main key area. The scroll character is generated by the VIEW key on the Gnot, the Alt Graph key on the SLC, and the arrow key ↓ on the other terminals. As a convenience for sloppy typists, some programs interpret → and ← keys, which lie on either side of ↓, as view keys as well. The arrow key ↑ scrolls backward.
Characters in Plan 9 are runes (see utf(6)). Any rune can be typed
using a compose key followed by several other keys. The compose
key is also generally near the lower right of the main key area:
the NUM PAD key on the Gnot, the Alternate key on the Next, the
Compose key on the SLC, the Option key on the
Magnum, and either Alt key on the PC. After typing the compose
key, type a capital X and exactly four hexadecimal characters
(digits and a to f) to type a single two–byte rune with the value
represented by the typed number. Type a lower case x and exactly
UTFmax*2 hexadecimal characters to type a single UTFmax
bytes rune. There are shorthands for many characters, comprising
the compose key followed by a two– or three–character sequence.
There are several rules guiding the design of the sequences, as
illustrated by the following examples. The full list is too long
to repeat here, but is contained in the file
/lib/keyboard in a format suitable for grep(1) or look(1).
|
FILES
/lib/keyboard sorted table of characters and keyboard sequences |
SEE ALSO
intro(1), ascii(1), tcs(1), acme(1), rio(1), sam(1), cons(3),
utf(6) |