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

[Sorry for the late reply. I stored this email away when I was busy
 with other things and somehow managed to forget it.]


Bob Rogers <[email protected]> writes:

>    From: Edi Weitz <[email protected]>
>    Date: 01 May 2003 20:19:26 +0200
> 
>    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.
> 
> Is this because the keyboard moves the non-letter ASCII characters
> in order to make umlauted characters more prominent?

Yes. It looks like this:

  <http://www.buessert.de/TRS-80/GermanTRS80/PC_GermanKeyboard_large.gif>

Note how {[]}\ are on the 7890ß keys and can only be reached while
pressing AltGr (right ALT key) simultaneously.

> If so, then you might be able to get some relief by setting up
> function-key-map "bindings" that turn modified umlauted keys into
> modified special ASCII keys.  Here is the first paragraph of the
> function-key-map C-h v documentation:
> 
> 	Keymap mapping ASCII function key sequences onto their preferred forms.
> 	This allows Emacs to recognize function keys sent from ASCII
> 	terminals at any point in a key sequence.
> 
> Despite what it says about ASCII, the mechanism is quite general;
> the default value (in emacs 20.7 anyway) has bindings for X11
> keysyms such as kp-insert and kp-5.  This remapping happens at a low
> enough level that terminal characters are remapped even in the
> middle of bindings.  For example, if you were to do
> 
> 	(define-key function-key-map [kp-5] "\C-f")
> 
> then typing "C-x kp-5" is equivalent to "C-x C-f".  So I imagine you
> might be able to re-encode whatever #\control-umlaut-u (for example)
> produces, some ISO-8859-* code byte I assume, into #\control-^, or
> something else more useful to you when interacting with emacs.  [And
> I'm using Lisp character syntax here because I don't know how to
> type #\umlaut-u on my keyboard.  ;-]

Thanks, I didn't know that! It took me some minutes to figure out how
to tell Emacs that I'm talking about "#\control-umlaut-o". The
solution was to use what-cursor-position (C-x =) and then use the
decimal code, i.e. for #\control-umlaut-o the decimal code is 150, so
the command would be, say,

  (define-key function-key-map [150] "\C-]")
 
>    If you do try this, please let me know whether it works; I'm very
> curious, and have no personal experience with European keyboards.

Works fine. Thanks again for this hint.

Cheers,
Edi.


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