Esc key overloaded

[Christopher-Chappell]

I see when I use the help keys command that the "Escape" key is mapped to "Esc", as it should be. However, if I actually use the "Esc" key in practice, it just takes me out of the session to the ZTI prompt. Is there a way to change the exit session to prompt use of the key or set an additional keyboard sequence to send the escape key?

The place I find I need this most is sending the escape character (for some reason ¢) to the OMVS shell in order to send signals to a program running. I think it always maps that to the escape key on the keyboard, and by the time I realize I need to use it, I'm already locked out of sending commands because of some long-running process in the foreground.

[najohnsn]

Are you saying you want to map the Esc to the ¢ character? And you want to do this because that's what you're used to?

[najohnsn]

Or is this a KEYLOCK issue?

[Christopher-Chappell]

I want to send the "esc" character to the 3270 session instead of leaving the session. the cent character is just a placeholder in OMVS from what I can tell

[najohnsn]

Okay. I see what's going on. The OMVS panel shows this:

ESC=¢

And in IBM Personal Communications, the Esc key defaults to being [sys attn]. (there isn't a 3270 Esc key)

In zti, ATTN is mapped to Ctrl+C:

KEYS:
 ATTN           - Ctrl+C or Alt+A

So, I think you want to press Ctrl+C instead of Esc.

[Christopher-Chappell]

So, I think you want to press Ctrl+C instead of Esc.

That puts me into OMVS Subcommand mode if I try it.

Are you sure [sys attn] and [attn] are the same?

[najohnsn]

That puts me into OMVS Subcommand mode if I try it.

That meets your expectation, right?

Are you sure [sys attn] and [attn] are the same?

Pretty sure. I haven't seen an [attn] in pcomm.

[Christopher-Chappell]

I'll have to see if I can resurrect pcomm somewhere, but I remember I used to be able to use a character on my keyboard to insert the "escape sequence" character in the prompt, represented by the cent sign, which if I followed up with a C I could send a SIGINT to stop the running process in the foreground.

[najohnsn]

@stilwelb helped me translate this...

As I said in a comment above, you see ESC=¢ in the OMVS panel. What I didn't understand is that is just a character (which is configurable) that is specially handled in OMVS send control characters to the program:

3270 Keys                                                        
---------                                                        
                                                                 
   Enter           In the shell with data at the command line:   
                   If the final character is not an escape       
                   character, pressing Enter appends a <newline> 
                   character to the data.  To pass an escape     
                   sequence, for example <ESC>-D, without a      
                   <newline> character following it, repeat the  
                   escape character at the end of the sequence:  
                   <ESC>-D-<ESC>.                                
                                                                 
                   In the shell with no data at the command line:
                   Pressing Enter scrolls output forward if the  
                   screen is full.                               
                                                                 
                   In subcommand mode: Pressing Enter processes  
                   the data in the command line as a subcommand. 

In that example above, you would actually enter ¢D¢ on the command line.

My guess is that you had previously mapped the Esc key in PCOMM to ¢. I don't know what terminal emulator you are using, but you basically want a way to type ¢ using your terminal emulator. Using Windows terminal, I can turn on NumLock, then hold down Alt and press 0162 on the number pad and that produces ¢. Clearly, that is not convenient. Maybe your terminal emulator allows you to map the Esc key to ¢?

My suggestion is that you don't assign the OMVS character to one that does not appear on your keyboard. It just makes things difficult - but that's up to you. Depending on what you do, maybe a backtick (`) would be a better choice? You can use that if you start OMVS like this:

TSO OMVS ESC('`')

Let me know if this is a sufficient answer. If so, we can close this out.

[Christopher-Chappell]

I tried TSO OMVS ESC('`') and it works! I wonder if there is a way to change the default for that. I did not set that up originally that I know of.