Re: C-l while in menu?

["Robert J. Chassell" <bob@rattlesnake.com>]

   > ... No one who uses the key in that position as a
   > control key will ever like Emacs.  That control key position is too
   > painful.

   FWIW, I'm using such keyboards for a long time, and I don't have any 
   significant problems.

Interesting -- you are the first person I have met who can stand to
use that keybinding for more than a few minutes.

   Unfortunately, the right Alt key is used as AltGr on national keyboards 
   (it produces non-ASCII characters and characters which have no keys).  So 
   it's not free to be usurped for the menus.

   But there are 3 more keys on most modern PC keyboards-- ...

I have seen that kind of keyboard, although many of the keyboards I
have seen are different.  What is their type?  xkeycaps lists a large
number of types, such as `104 key, wide Delete, shorter Enter'

Certainly, one of those extra keys could be used for menus.


   >     Sometimes the CONTROL key is labeled CTRL or CTL; at other times it is
   >     labeled differently:  often as CAPS LOCK.  

   I think users who read the tutorial (novices, I'd expect) will be 
   tremendously confused by that, since most of them don't have their keys 
   remapped.  

You are very unusual in being able to use a control key in the far
lower left.

My experience is based on people who tell me their keyboard has no
`Return' key, and who then have no more difficulty using a key that is
labeled `Enter' as a Return key as in using key that is labeled `Caps
Lock' as a control key.

    > So I think we should at most add a footnote saying something
    > about the possibility of remapped keys, and that the tutorial
    > assumes that they aren't.  Anything else will cause more
    > confusion than there might be now.

    That's right.  When we're talking about novices, we should assume
    that they didn't change anything, as they don't know how to do
    that.

We are talking about *setting up* a default configuration for novices.
We are choosing what keybindings we think should be their default.

Why choose a keybinding default that people dislike?  Eli is the
exception: other than him, the people I know cannot comfortably use a
control key in the far lower left.

We have to choose some default -- why choose that one?

To take another example:  Eli said that some keyboards carry left and
right `Windows' keys:  why should I bind them to shift among virtual
consoles, only some of which may be running X Windows?  (That is what
`Windows' suggests to me -- a key to shift among different windowing
sessions, the way the M-C-Fn_key binding works for me.)

On keyboards that have them, why not bind those keys in some other
way?  Eli suggested binding one of them to a menu pop up command.


-- 
    Robert J. Chassell                  bob@rattlesnake.com
    Rattlesnake Enterprises             http://www.rattlesnake.com