On Wed, Jun 26, 2002 at 08:55:19PM -0500, David Dyer-Bennet wrote: > Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom <chrome at real-time.com> writes: > > > > WTF is a compose key? > > > > look at an honest-to-God DEC VT dumbterm, and you'll see a 'compose' key on > > it. other dumbterms probably have them as well. > > As Mr. Goldman implies, it's used for composing foreign characters like the > > Spanish characters that have the ~ over them, and such like. > > Well, maybe on the new enough ones. Not on any of the ones I remember > working with, and not on the two in the next room. (Did it come in > with the VT220 series, in which case I actually did have one on my > desk in Marlboro briefly, or was it later, in which case I really > never did see it?) I never sat in front of vt102 or vt220 terms enough to learn any differences between them and the vt420s I used to live in front of. my wyse 185 has a compose key as well. <ramble> I never got ahold of any of the vt420s when they got rid of them at Winona State. :( On the other tentacle, I *did* find a DEC PS/2 keyboard at a customer site, that's pretty much *exactly* the same as the vt420 keyboard. :) :) :) I was so excited with joy at merely the sight of such a thing, that the customer gave it to me. :) :) :) In retrospect, the keys are a bit mushy compared to my mid-80s IBM Type-Ms; but for nostalgia it's a great thing. :) :) :) </ramble> Carl Soderstrom. -- Network Engineer Real-Time Enterprises www.real-time.com