From: becka@rz.uni-duesseldorf.de
  To  : ggi-develop@eskimo.com
  Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 14:32:55 +0200 (MET DST)

Re: ggiGetc or ggiGetkey?

Hi !

> Ok, I keep hearing mention of SAK, but I have no idea what it means
> aside from that it stands for "Secure Attention Key".  (Before I
> got that far, I was starting to think it was a german colloquialism
> that didn't translate to english well :-).  Someone want to fill me
> in?

This means, that the key is intercepted by the operating system (thus secure)
and will get you the "systems attention".
That usually means, that you get a logon prompt.

WinNT uses Ctrl-Alt-Del which will pop up a logon/logoff dialog, when you
press it.

Under Linux, this is commonly bound to Ctrl-Print or something, as this
Key is commonly labeled as SysReq (System Request) on the front.

Under Unix the common behaviour is to kill all apps on the console and
return you to the logon prompt.

The main uses for such a key are:
- getting back out of RAW keyboard mode
- resetting a broken video mode, if you have KGI installed (*grin*)
- preventing login-spoofing (i.e. running a script that shows a fake 
  login prompt to catch passwords)

CU,Andy

-- 
Andreas Beck              |  Email :  <Andreas.Beck@ggi-project.org>