Re: thoughts on interaction of key bindings and input methods (was Re: wish: right alt/meta to switch keyboard layout while pressed )

[Paul Pogonyshev <pogonyshev@gmx.net>]

Ben Wing wrote:
> now, from personal experience: i have had many times when i've been in 
> foreign countries and had to log on to the internet.  typically, the 
> punctuation is in a completely different place.  i always switched to us 
> layout, and found it nearly impossible to use any other layouts.  i 
> *definitely* would expect in such a case that keyboard shortcuts 
> involving punctuation should follow the logical, not physical, layout -- 
> but with the physical layout as a backup, so when i temporarily switch 
> to russian, i can still type C-x. (with alphabetic keys, it is 
> semi-feasible to search the keyboard in front of me to find the keys, 
> but this is just impossible for punctuation.)

I fail to see while it is impossible for punctuation, but here is my
reasoning.  (I'm constantly referring to Russian layout since that's what
I use; I agree I'm somewhat biased because of this, since Russian uses a
different alphabet.)

Let's say we have punctuation following the logical layout, while the
alphabetical key bindings remain on physically the same keys.  I won't
stress the consistency objection here, just the practical consequences
for a Russian layout users (must also apply to any layout with an
alphabet with more than 26 letters.)

According to your proposal, key binding for command `M-.' (find-tag)
will be on logical `M-.' in Russian layout, physically corresponding to
English `M-/'.  Now, many variants of the Russian layout (including
Emacs' `russian-computer') don't have any way to type in the slash
except by using the keypad.  So, the command `dabbrev-expand' (M-/)
becomes unavailable in Russian layout: there is no way to type that
logically.  And if you type that as-in-English, it invokes `find-tag',
according to your proposal.

This is just one example.  There are certainly more, involving such
key combinations like `M-^', `M-$' (which I use quite often) and others.
All these cannot be typed with Russian layout and their physical keys
clash with placement of punctuation on the Russian layout.

Physical correspondence with English layout (which, I think, is marked
on all keyboards, may be wrong here) is something all layouts have in
common.  In all other aspects they have lots of differences, including
the location of keys corresponding to punctuation characters.

One not-yet-discussed possibility is to distinguish between layouts
for latin alphabet-based languages and all the rest (Cyrillic, Greek,
...)  Since I only regularly use Russian and English layouts, maybe
someone using, say German or Swedish layouts, could comment on this.

Paul