> and the overloading of ESC for the actual ESC key
What else was the ESC key made for if not the control code?
> I've thought for a while that I should implement an extremely reduced set of escape sequences which use a non-ESC character (maybe SOH or something) for control sequences and key encoding. A minimal set -- color / cursor position / save-screen / query-size -- whatever it takes to make vim/emacs + tmux/screen work, and call it a day.
I did that as a 8086 boot sector and it would render tmux with unicode characters stripped. You need surprisingly few sequences.
What else was the ESC key made for if not the control code?
> I've thought for a while that I should implement an extremely reduced set of escape sequences which use a non-ESC character (maybe SOH or something) for control sequences and key encoding. A minimal set -- color / cursor position / save-screen / query-size -- whatever it takes to make vim/emacs + tmux/screen work, and call it a day.
I did that as a 8086 boot sector and it would render tmux with unicode characters stripped. You need surprisingly few sequences.