Teaching Keybindings

[pixel...@gmail.com]

Per the discussion today, I wonder if it might be useful to add a button to the cluster that lists the special keybindings? We've got those nice buttons to the right on a full loadout.


The idea is that it opens some TEdit file with help.

[Nick Briggs]

Key bindings are dynamic, so a static TEdit document isn't going to provide that much help -- one can make them whatever one wants.  Various "applications" (for lack of a better name for a bunch of Lisp functions that play well together) start from different places, which one can typically change to suit one's usage.  The *mechanism* is documented in the IRM [see the "Manual" button ;-) ], the different applications typically have their own documentation (i.e., the .TEDIT file corresponding to the main source file in library or lispusers )

But seriously -- when I first started using Interlisp-D in 1984 one thing I found missing, that I had used extensively on other Xerox operating systems, was a "Concepts and Facilities" manual.  It gave you the basic (and sometimes not-so-basic) vocabulary and made it much easier to find what you wanted in the manuals for the rest of the system.  Those typically had a "User Guide" which was goal oriented for a typical end-user, and an " ... Reference" manual in which you'd get the specific syntax for API calls, or commands, or... which were intended for people digging deeper or doing development.  We have some glossary entries, but they're more for when you encounter a word and need to know what it means, not when you're trying to build a mental model of the system (though reading an entire glossary can be a last resort).

One can use the TOC of the IRM along with the section introductions as a weak substitute for the "Concepts and Facilities", but this is a pretty complex system and there's no way around reading a lot if you want to develop more than a surface understanding of what's going on, and/or you're doing/building things with Interlisp itself rather than an application built on top of it (which should have its own documentation).

-- Nick

On Oct 13, 2025, at 14:29, pixel...@gmail.com wrote:

Per the discussion today, I wonder if it might be useful to add a button to the cluster that lists the special keybindings? We've got those nice buttons to the right on a full loadout.


The idea is that it opens some TEdit file with help.

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<keys.png>

[Herb Jellinek]

I interpreted Ryan's note as suggesting adding a button that opens a plain old TEdit document explaining which keys do what in the Exec.

That would be easy to implement and helpful to brand new users.

                Herb

[Ron Kaplan]

With respect to each application (Exec/Sedit/Tedit...) there are 2 different aspects:

-- What characters get transmitted when you type ordinary keys

-- What meta/ctrl/shift character and click commands do in that application.

For the first, the default keyboard image in Virtual keyboards (updated the other day) gives a reasonable picture, assuming a new (or even experienced) user hasn't figured out how to modify the keyaction tables.  (Note that the virtual layout may not correspond to the physical layout of the user's particular keyboard.)

The second is application dependent.  For the Exec, it's basically whatever commands are embedded in TTYIN, I don't know if these are stored in an accessible/interpretable list structure.  Sedit does bring up a menu of commands.  Tedit doesn't yet do that but it could, given that the keybindings have now been rationalized and are available as data structures.  (Unlike Sedit, Tedit command bindings may be window dependent--Tedit on source code may arm mode characters (for man, open, pf) that are not relevant to text windows.  So you would see different command menus on different windows)

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[pixel...@gmail.com]

Thanks for the replies!

Similar to what Herb interpreted, I was suggesting simply listing the defaults (especially for the F key combinations).

I was thinking 3 static sections (kind of like a reference "card").
SEdit: default key bindings
TEdit: default key bindings
Exec: default key bindings

But yes, I see it gets more complex (and into the domain of querying their current settings) if you really want to have an authoritative source created in real time.
When I was learning Emacs for example, I had a 2 page cheat sheet I pinned to my cubicle wall for a month or so. :)

Anyway, these are just some thoughts.

[Paolo Amoroso]

Nick, can you provide an example of a Concepts and Facilities manual for a Xerox operating system? At Bitsavers I haven't found anything relevant for Cedar and ViewPoint.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/lispcore/B0C2AEFC-238E-426A-88D7-BB67342F8CC9%40gmail.com.

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Paolo Amoroso | Blog | Mastodon