Re: wish: right alt/meta to switch keyboard layout while pressed

[Juri Linkov <juri@jurta.org>]

> So, if I want to type an apostrophe from Russian keyboard layout, I
> have to type `C-\ ' C-\'.  If, however, the temporary-switching was
> implemented, I could do with `press-right-alt ' release-right-alt',
> which is obviously much easier.
>
> As far as I can tell, Emacs currently just ignores the right Alt.
>
> Can this be implemented easily?

I think the most natural way to do this in Emacs is to use C-q.
So to quote ' in an input method and not to translate it, you could
use C-q '.

However, this currently doesn't work.  C-q inserts a translated
character, and while C-q together with an input method read an input
sequence, the intermediate display in the echo area is quite messy.

It seems `quoted-insert' (C-q) attempts to do something with this
situation, and it let-binds `translation-table-for-input' to nil
before reading a quoted character, but this doesn't work for quoting
characters in input methods.  I propose the following patch to let-bind
`input-method-function' to nil as well.

Index: lisp/simple.el
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/emacs/emacs/lisp/simple.el,v
retrieving revision 1.769
diff -c -r1.769 simple.el
*** lisp/simple.el	20 Nov 2005 18:08:55 -0000	1.769
--- lisp/simple.el	23 Nov 2005 06:04:04 -0000
***************
*** 609,615 ****
  digits are interpreted as a character code.  This is intended to be
  useful for editing binary files."
    (interactive "*p")
!   (let* ((char (let (translation-table-for-input)
  		 (if (or (not overwrite-mode)
  			 (eq overwrite-mode 'overwrite-mode-binary))
  		     (read-quoted-char)
--- 610,616 ----
  digits are interpreted as a character code.  This is intended to be
  useful for editing binary files."
    (interactive "*p")
!   (let* ((char (let (translation-table-for-input input-method-function)
  		 (if (or (not overwrite-mode)
  			 (eq overwrite-mode 'overwrite-mode-binary))
  		     (read-quoted-char)

-- 
Juri Linkov
http://www.jurta.org/emacs/