Re: Key binding M-g should really be goto-line

[Luc Teirlinck <teirllm@dms.auburn.edu>]

Jari Aalto wrote:

       "I want Emacs to move in the direction of doing word processing.  It
       may take years, but we will get there.  Then commands to specify faces
       will become important, and will need a good key binding.

       I chose the M-g binding for that reason, and the reason continues to
       have force.  So I don't intend to change that binding."

   Please, I have been watching this future over 10 years now

I personally do not have strong opinions on the goto-line binding.  I
personally use `M-x g-l RET' (with partial completion mode).

In as far as the current state of Emacs' word processing capabilities
are concerned:

I am personally not a "word processor guy", but while proofreading the
Emacs manual I took a close look at Enriched mode.

Enriched mode used to have bugs that nearly made it unusable, except
for very basic stuff.  I recently checked and corrected the
documentation and corrected bugs I found.  I believe that Enriched
mode currently largely "works" in the sense that it pretty much
correctly does what it claims to be able to do.  _But_ it only
supports the text/enriched format _and_ it does so in a way conforming
to RFC 1563, which has been obsolete since 1996.  I believe that
text/enriched should be updated for RFC 1896.  (Assuming that this is
still the most up to date standard.  It was when I last checked.)
Importantly, other formats should be supported.

Last time we discussed this, at least one person seemed to interested
in supporting additional formats.  If such plans would actually
materialize (of course, there is no guarantee of that until it
actually happens), it could bring the future of "Emacs as a word
processor" a lot closer.  Updating for RFC 1896 would seem to be less
complex and require less work than supporting new formats.

Sincerely,

Luc.