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Comment by tyingq | Hacker News Reader

I believe VT52 and VT100 terminals have a physical ESC key where you would expect it to be. On newer models, like VT220, etc, you can use the setup screen to put them in VT100 mode. Once you do that, the F11 key will function as an escape key.

Also note it was viewed as a weird choice to omit the key at the time. Televideo, a competitor, called it out in their ads: https://imgur.com/a/u7KHRjQ

Somewhat interesting that Apple recently took away, then gave back the ESC key on their pro laptops.

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I still want my Meta key! How can we do Ctrl-Alt-Meta-Cokebottle? But, seriously, having three "control-like" keys gives us 8 'name-spaces' using different combinations of Ctrl / Alt / Meta. Pretty convenient.

I still want arbitrary modifier keys.

This is a feature of some game engines which allow people to use arbitrary keys (or combinations) as modifier keys. Which allow for less motion of the hand over the keyboard, by simply being able to hit the same keys (with some modifiers) quickly.

You would need an N-key-rollover keyboard to be able to do this, at least in the general case. Baseline keyboards do not register overlapping keypresses correctly, unless you are using the ordinary modifier keys.

I never knew about this. My laptop seems to have 8-key rollover for most (?) sequences that would be natural for your hands, but drops as low as 2-key for unlikely combinations. Any idea what's going on?

http://gadzikowski.com/nkeyrollover.html

Sure, but a lot of gaming hardware supports this, and it's a hardware issue. If one is customizing their editor to the point of using arbitrary modifier keys, they will probably be willing to buy a custom keyboard.

Also while on the subject 8 key rollover, which is pretty common, is probably more than enough.

> Once you do that, the F11 key will function as an escape key.

This photo seems to corroborate that: https://external-preview.redd.it/SiLVPTrm_c8MfLplX48AxZySG5x...

Some of the LK201 function strip variants had it labelled, e.g. https://deskthority.net/wiki/File:LK201_top.jpg

In my many years of Unixing, I never used any vtxy0 with x greater than 2. The vast majority were vt100 or close. Especially compatibles; the few genuine DEC terminals that came with the machine were left in the machine room.

That TeleVideo ad is amazing. Thank you!

Sure. You can see the whole ad here: https://books.google.com/books?id=4Wgmey4obagC&lpg=RA1-PA68&...

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