• Feature request - Add option to translate DEL to BACKSPACE for externa

    From Keyop Troy@VERT to GitLab issue in main/sbbs on Sat Jan 21 13:04:58 2023
    open https://gitlab.synchro.net/main/sbbs/-/issues/497

    Some native unix applications, such as Zmachine emulators only accept Backspace (ASCII 8) as a backspace key, however some terminal emulations send DEL (ASCII 127) which confuse the native application.

    Would it be possible to add a configuration within an individual door such as "Translate DEL to BS?" which would be "No" by default which could be changed to "Yes" for problematic doors?

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  • From Rob Swindell@VERT to GitLab note in main/sbbs on Sat Jan 21 14:38:09 2023
    https://gitlab.synchro.net/main/sbbs/-/issues/497#note_3093

    Synchronet already supports the swapping of the DEL (ASCII 127) and Backspace (ctrl-H) codes upon input:
    `[T] Terminal Mode : Auto CP437 / ANSI (color) DEL=BS `

    Is the user's terminal configuration in SBBS already set this way?

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  • From Keyop Troy@VERT to GitLab note in main/sbbs on Sat Jan 21 14:54:57 2023
    https://gitlab.synchro.net/main/sbbs/-/issues/497#note_3094

    What we (myself and nelgin) have discovered is that if we login to the BBS say via Syncterm, it uses BS for the backspace key, and when using telnet from a linux box, DEL is used for the backspace key. So a user could switch between terminal types and have a different backspace key configuration.

    So a registered user could login via different mechanisms and have different experience each time, depending on which terminal config / software they used.

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  • From Rob Swindell@VERT to GitLab note in main/sbbs on Sat Jan 21 16:40:03 2023
    https://gitlab.synchro.net/main/sbbs/-/issues/497#note_3096

    So such a terminal (that sends DEL for the backspace key) would also have weird behavior in Synchronet and many other doors. This feature request seems to only be addressing one possible such issue but is not a holistic solution.

    Instead, I would propose that the option to add / enable would be something like "input translations", which would include PETSCII character remapping and DEL<->BS, but only if the user's terminal settings are setting accordingly. I see that stdio doors would suffer even worse problems with PETSCII and possibly UTF-8 terminals and a more holistic solution would solve for all these problems, but would require that the user set their terminal settings accordingly (there's no real/good way to auto-detect when someone is using a terminal that sends DEL for BS unless you prompt them to hit the backspace key for every login).

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