Eli Zaretskii wrote:

>On 23 Apr 2002, Miles Bader wrote:
>
>>Ben Wing <ben@666.com> writes:
>>
>>>the fact is that things work quite well when you have only a meta key.
>>>e.g. meta+letter is an accelerator only when such a menu exists;
>>>otherwise, you get the regular binding -- and even then you can
>>>retrieve the shadowed binding with shift+meta+letter.
>>>
>>Do people really like this?
>>
>
>I don't.  One ``feature'' that particularly annoys me is that, as Ben 
>described, pressing Alt alone and then releasing it activates the menu 
>bar.  So if I press Alt and then change my mind, I need to remember to 
>type ESC or something similar before I can type text again.  That's a 
>real dumper on fast typing.
>

this is only on for windows, and you can turn this off, of course.

>
>
>>It sounds astonishly annoying to have
>>random meta keys stolen by the menus, especially since emacs has many
>>useful and common commands on M-letter keys.  E.g., doesn't the `File'
>>menu steal `M-f', the `Buffers' menu `M-b', etc.?
>>
>
>I think such a mode is inappropriate for Emacs because our menu bar can 
>change dynamically as a function of what you type.  So in Emacs, what 
>keys will be stolen is not entirely predictable, which makes this even a 
>worse idea, IMHO.
>
>I'd suggest to find a modifier other than Meta, and use that instead.  
>Something like Super or Hyper, for example; we support them on Windows as 
>well.  For tty's, we could have some prefix key instead.
>

you guys are so X-centric in your thinking.  there is no other key in 
Windows, really.  people *always* expect the Alt key to traverse to 
menus, and it's no exception here.

as i said before [but it got purposely chopped off], most of the 
shadowed keys are available elsewhere -- M-f is also Ctrl-right, M-b is 
Ctrl-left, M-v [the View menu] is Next, etc.  Furthermore, those 
arrow/cursor-key bindings are more intuitive, and more standard, than 
the old-style Emacs bindings.  i designed things intentionally so they 
most all work like this.

>
>
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