RE: Simple Tasks, new TODO category

["Drew Adams" <drew.adams@oracle.com>]

> > Well, I don't really want to argue about it. I'll just go on record as
> > saying that it is a (classic) mistake. We should at least 
> > provide an escape syntax for such a "special" character.
> 
> Of course: without escape syntax this won't fly. No one may assume that
> a specific character will never be used in a menu label. It still makes
> sense to use one (or two, depending on the way escape is implemented)
> character that is rarely used, to minimize annoyance.

If there is an escape syntax, I have no objection to using a printable character.

However, then something will need to be done to automatically escape that character in generated menu items (Imenu, buffer names, frame names, etc.).

And then how will you deal with code that automatically generates menu items that purposefully contain the keyboard-access character? How will the automatic-escaping code distinguish such occurrences of the character from occurrences that should be escaped?

Wouldn't it make more sense to use a non-printable character? Then, no generated menus would need to be massaged. 

I still haven't seen any reason given, beyond a supposed convenience, why non-printable characters shouldn't be used. What is inconvenient about using an octal code for a non-printable character? This is about Lisp code, not Emacs user interaction, isn't it?