bug#43866: 26.3; italian postfix additions

[Robert Pluim <rpluim@gmail.com>]

>>>>> On Wed, 14 Oct 2020 00:38:48 -0400, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> said:

    >> Would it make sense to support exactly the same keys that are
    >> provided by the X11 compose method?

    Richard> That might be a good idea.

Could we provide this as an input method?

    Richard> Also, I wonder if we could make that command more self-documenting.
    Richard> Maybe C-h in the argument for C-x 8 could display a buffer
    Richard> which displays characters you can choose.
    Richard> Each character would be followed by the sequence to type to choose that
    Richard> character.

The problem is that such a list is very long. 'C-h b' after 'C-x 8
RET' will display the bindings, but it does not currently contain the
character names, and TAB after 'C-x 8 RET' will list all the names but
not the sequences for entering them.

There are completion frameworks that have solved this, eg with helm
you can start typing right after 'C-x 8 RET' and it will narrow the
list down automatically. Iʼm sure we could do something similar.

    Richard> This should include all the characters Emacs supports, divided clearly
    Richard> into Unicode code blocks, with their unicode names.  Not just the ones
    Richard> that have specific short C-x 8 sequences definied in Emacs.

Why does it matter which code block a character is in?

    Richard> It would be nice to have a prefix more mnemonic than C-x 8.
    Richard> But I have nothing to suggest.

    Richard> It would be good to shorten C-x 8 RET.  That is my go-to method
    Richard> of inserting characters for which I don't know a sequence.

Where would you put it? Note that if you do know the sequence you can
use Alt or a dead accent key instead of 'C-x 8' (someone did suggest
freeing up F2 recently)

    Richard> Currently, 8 upper-case letters are valid after C-h 8, and 6
    Richard> lower-case.  Suppose we free up one case -- either the upper-case
    Richard> letters or the lower-case letters.  Then we could make typing
    Richard> a letter of that case throw you into the minibuffer.

I think itʼs a tossup as to which of them would be easier to free
up. The lower case bindings have one fewer prefix key, so perhaps
lower case. Or perhaps a completely different binding.

    Richard> In this way, we could replace C-x 8 RET UNICODE-NAME RET with
    Richard> C-x 8 UNICODE-NAME RET.

    Richard> Also, why not change the Unicode character names to lower-case?
    Richard> They would look nicer that way, I think.

The Unicode character names are always described in upper case, but I
guess we could add a configuration option so that 'ucs-names'
downcased them (the completion in C-x 8 RET is case insensitive)

Robert
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