Help! My keys don't do what I want! Backspace and delete don't work!

[lunite]

My boss asked me to try using linux because we cannot afford photoshop and there is a program called The GIMP. He gave me some CDs with Slackware on them so I installed them.

I had to edit some files and was told to use vi so I did. But the arrow keys don't work right, I get ABCD and a new line when I try to hit one of them. Backspace and Delete don't work either. Well sometimes they do but not always. Help!!!

Luna

 

[skiflyer]

So uhm, I'm all for Linux, I love it, am learning it myself... but as of right now, I'm running The GIMP on 3 windows boxes without difficulty.

http://www2.arnes.si/~sopjsimo/gimp/

VI is a very different editor than anything you've likely used before. The keys do work, but they do different things in different modes, be they edit or movement modes. For details on that check out...

http://www.cs.fsu.edu/general/vimanual.html

Oh, and I found the first link by googling for
the gimp windows
and the second one by googling for
vi manual



-Rob

 

[lunite]

We use mac though except for this computer with slackware on it! My boss doesn't want to pay for Windows+Photoshop license because I am just on an internship here. :-(

I go in insert mode by pressing i and all keys work except the arrows and the delete and backspace! I get beeps too when I try to hit backspace at the beggining of a line. I hate it!!!

 

[skiflyer]

so install a different text editor. I would suggest emacs, but that's because I know all the key mappings for it.

As far as the GIMP issue is concerend, please try using google. You can get it for make for 25-40$ depending on if you're a student or not.

http://store4.esellerate.net/store/Layout8/Catalog.asp?StoreIDC=STR228073359

-Rob

 

[RhythmAce]

If you are running linux with a gui such as gnome or kde, you might try gedit.

 

[flugh]

Sounds like your terminal emulation may be off a bit. Quick and dirty, try 'export TERM=linux' or 'export TERM=xterm', and even 'export TERM=vt100'. It will affect how programs interpret keystrokes, especially backspace and delete. Not that I think it's the main source of your problems (you need to read the man pages for vi or whatever editor you are using) for the specific stuff. But a lot of your terminal behavior is dictated by the $TERM environment variable.


----
JBR

 

[flugh]

I did a google for 'backspace delete linux' and got this mini-howto. May be of help:

http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-mini/BackspaceDelete.html

----
JBR

 

[icrf]

I'm running FreeBSD 4.9, so I don't know if the path or filename will be the same with Slackware, but I dug up the example .vimrc file that came with vim (it's like vi, but "improved", adds some nice features). I copied the following file to ~/.vimrc

/usr/local/share/vim/vim61/vimrc_example.vim

Even lets me cruise around with the arrow keys while in input mode, something difficult to get around coming from many years of windows. I changed some things I didn't want by default, like syntax highlighting off (bad general color choice, considering a terminal's black background) and line numbering on set nu). Fairly easy to do if looking at the file, and maybe some additional documentation, like a man page.

And to get delete working, I used (under tcsh) the same key binding listed in flugh's link (very nice):

bindkey "^[[3~" delete-char

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...but I'm just a C man trying to see the light