Re: lynx-dev Keys, an attempt to understand

[Klaus Weide]

On Wed, 10 Feb 1999, Jacob Poon wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Feb 1999, Henry Nelson wrote:
> 
> > My concept is that there "ought" to be a table which can hold at least
> > 424 (106 keys x 4 variations [alone, shift-, ctrl-, alt-]) keystrokes
> > with mappings to 1272 actions (424 keystrokes x 3 modes [browser, dired,
> > text editor]). [ ... ]
> 
> 424?  Isn't this too limited?  Even DOS machines had added a few more
> modifier keys recently.  It will be bettter if Lynx can accept actions
> that use several modifier keys at the same time, so that Lynx will not
> run out key maps so easily as it currently does.

[ much snippage ]

> So, the L2 encoder generates one of the following codes for each key
> combination:
> 
> yyyyyyyy  if no modifier;
> 11111111vvvvvvvvxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.....yyyyyyyy  if modifier is used.  Note
> that byte value 0xFF is assumed as the 'extended key'.
> 
> The 'v' bits tells L3 decoder how many bits are used as modifiers. 
> Modifiers are encoded in network byte order (big-endian), because it will
> allow data to be packed further, by allocating less frequently used
> modifiers as 'most significant bits'. 

This looks more like a proposal for a protocol to ship keys over a wire,
than anything useful in lynx for passing values between function.  I'm
afraid you would have to explain much more, or better build a prototype...

   Klaus