Re: bindings reserved for users

[PPAATT@aol.com]

> > > Date: 4/20/02 11:28:15 AM MDT
> > > From: rms@gnu.org (Richard Stallman)
> > ...
> > > Since such characters
> > > are not available on all terminals, ...
> > > People won't want to use these keys in major modes
> > > or minor modes meant for general use.
> > 
> > Looks to me like Emacs folk actually do
> > commonly bind rare keys for general use?
>
> Subj: Re: across terminals 
> Date: 4/26/02 8:19:16 AM MDT
> From: monnier+gnu/emacs@RUM.cs.yale.edu
>
> `e' with an acute accent is a letter, `]' is not.

Yes.  And Unicode xE9 EWithAcute often appears
as a letter key in Montreal.

> >  C-h i m emacs RET m keymaps RET
...
> The experience until now is that
> non-ASCII letters are never used
> by major modes or minor modes,
> so we [haven't needed] to decide
> whether they should be reserved for the user or not.

Curious.  I can make sense of the RMS English this way,
thank you ... except I see you didn't write exactly this.
Where I write [] brackets, you actually wrote "we don't
need" to decide?

Did you mean to say we don't need to decide the key
sequences we have reserved for the user?

Really??  We don't?  Shouldn't we state precisely
what keys we have reserved for the user?
The earlier, the clearer, the better?

> the manual's description ...
> the casual reader might confuse
> the notion of letter and character.

Good new point, thank you.  We've also heard recently
here from people confusing the notion of a lower case
English letter with other notions of letter, like upper and
lower case letters, not to mention "the letter keys".

> ...

What first drew my attention here was me failing to find
any commonly available shifted key left reserved
for the user by GNU Emacs.

For example, I'd like a short sequence like M-o C-c to
remind me "kill-ring-save is on C-insert, M-w", because
I know well the local (Windows) convention of edit-cut,
edit-copy, and edit-paste being on C-x, C-c, and C-v.

I think [ C-h i m emacs RET m keymaps RET ] tells me
Emacs reserves for my use only the single keys
F5 thru F9: no single key that I can hit without looking.

If M-n M-o M-p are not candidates to be reserved for the
user, how about the other single keys not bound by
Emacs 20.7.1 by default i.e.
C-` C-= C-; C-' C-, C-.

These I can hit on a US keyboard almost as easily as
I can hit M-n M-o M-p.  And I'd find C-= mnemonic for my
purpose.

> ...

I'm here only by cc - please feel free to banish me
back to gnu.emacs.help when appropriate.

Thanks again everyone,
Pat LaVarre
http://members.aol.com/plscsi/emacs/emacs-deja-vu.html





Subj:    Re: across terminals 
Date:   4/26/02 8:19:16 AM Mountain Daylight Time
From:   monnier+gnu/emacs@RUM.cs.yale.edu (Stefan Monnier)
...

> > From: rms@gnu.org (Richard Stallman)
> > Let's consider this issue closed
> > and NOT SPEND MORE TIME on it, OK?
> 
> This we could do by fiat, sure boss.
> 
> > I stand by what I said.
> 
> I'm new here I know, but certainly I am
> as yet failing to make sense of what you said.
> 
> Do you mean to withdraw or otherwise modify
> what you did not repeat?  That is ...
> 
> > Date: 4/20/02 11:28:15 AM MDT
> > From: rms@gnu.org (Richard Stallman)
> ...
> > Since such characters are not available on all
> > terminals, ...  People won't want to use these
> > keys in major modes or minor modes
> > meant for general use.
> 
> Looks to me like Emacs folk actually do
> commonly bind rare keys for general use?

The experience until now is that non-ASCII letters are never used by major 
modes or minor modes, so we don't need to decide whether they should be 
reserved for the user or not.

And note that we are talking about letters, not about characters.

`e' with an acute accent is a letter, `]' is not.

I think the only problem with the manual's description is that the casual 
reader might confuse the notion of letter and character.

    Stefan