#8708 LOW Not Tri: OFW sometimes loses first keystroke

[Zarro Boogs per Child]

#8708: OFW sometimes loses first keystroke
-----------------------------------+----------------------------------------
   Reporter:  thomaswamm           |       Owner:  wmb at firmworks.com
       Type:  defect               |      Status:  closed           
   Priority:  low                  |   Milestone:  Not Triaged      
  Component:  ofw - open firmware  |     Version:  not specified    
 Resolution:  wontfix              |    Keywords:                   
Next_action:  reproduce            |    Verified:  0                
  Blockedby:                       |    Blocking:                   
-----------------------------------+----------------------------------------
Changes (by wmb at firmworks.com):

  * status:  new => closed
  * resolution:  => wontfix


Comment:

 The reason is because OFW interprets escape sequences of the form
 ESC-<some_character> as line editing commands to do things like erase-word
 - basic EMACS bindings.

 If you hold down the ESC key, the hardware auto-repeats the ESC key.  If
 the number of auto-repeated ESC characters is even, the first one will be
 taken as the ESC that cancels auto-boot, subsequent pairs are discarded
 (ESC-ESC is an undefined editing command), and the final unpaired one is
 the beginning of an escape sequence.

 I'm not inclined to "fix" this, because fixing it (by discarding queued-up
 characters after auto-boot is canceled) would cause a different anomaly -
 if someone types Esc to cancel and then immediately proceeds to type, for
 instance, "boot", withoug waiting for the prompt, then part of the typed-
 ahead command would be discarded.  One possibility would be to discard
 only ESC characters, but that would require adding push-back to the
 console input channel, which would be a lot of trouble for little payback.

 Workaround - don't hold down ESC - just type it once.  If you type it as
 soon as you hear the jingle start, everything will work just fine.

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/8708#comment:1>
One Laptop Per Child <http://laptop.org/>
OLPC bug tracking system