RE: Ilisp key binding changes (Option #2) - Please Review

From: Edi Weitz on Thursday, May 01, 2003 12:19 PM

> "Clementson, Bill" <[email protected]> writes:
[snip]
> > Incidentally, does anyone have a list of what characters are ALWAYS
> > present on terminals?
> 
> The GNU Emacs Manual (13th edition, printed version) I have here says:
> 
>   "On ASCII terminals, there are only 32 possible control
>    characters. These are the control variants of letters and
>    `@[]\^_'. In addition, the shift key is meaningless with control
>    characters: C-a and C-A are the same character, and Emacs cannot
>    distinguish them."
> 
> But let me re-iterate what someone else has said on c.l.l: Some of
> these non-letter characters are very hard to type for localized
> keyboards, e.g. on my German keyboard {[]}\|@ can only be reached by
> pressing the right ALT key ("AltGr") together with another key. I
> guess this is about the same for most European keyboard variants.

So, it looks like the best "common denominator" to use is just the 
characters from "a" - "z" and numbers.

[snip]

> So, I think you'll have to find a balance between the needs of
> terminal users and the needs of users of localized keyboards. I,
> personally, never use Emacs over a terminal line... :)

Same for me; however, half of all the responses that I have received
from c.l.l., the ilisp lists and via email have been from terminal
users. So, (for some segment of the ilisp community at least) I 
would like to provide bindings that work well on a dumb terminal. 

> Thank you very very much for the enormous amount of work you put into
> this. I'm one of those who use only a small percentage of what ILISP
> has to offer and one of the reasons is that I haven't taken the time
> yet to learn the keybindings. Your effort will be a very good reason
> for me to finally do it!

You're welcome. I'm quite looking forward to having the new bindings
in place too. I found that I used only a relatively small subset of the
ilisp bindings before I started this exercise. With more consistency 
and bindings that are easier to remember, I think that will change 
for a lot of people (myself included). Bob Rogers' suggestions regarding 
the key bindings have made it a lot easier to achieve this consistency 
and he should get a lot of the credit.

--
Bill Clementson


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