Re: APL mode

[Juergen Sauermann <juergen.sauermann@t-online.de>]

Hi Rustom,

maybe you want to reconsider your old proposal of using the
AltGr key for APL and Alt for emacs.

With xmodmap you can make Alt and Alt-Gr different modifiers, e.g.

add Mod1 = 108

I also believe that it is important to have the same method inside and
outside emacs. As a user I would be very irritated if I would need to type,
for example, ESC G inside emacs and CTRL-G when running APL from
a shell.


  Jürgen



On 10/26/2013 06:38 AM, Rustom Mody wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 7:10 AM, Stefan Monnier
> <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
>>> If there is something fundamentally wrong with this line please let me know
>> I'm still wondering why a plain old normal well-supported quail
>> input-method is not a good solution.
> Obviously I know very little about quail -- so consider this as
> thoughts for our comments.
>
> In quail you need (as far as I understand) some kind of 'herald'
> character like the  '\' for tex input method.
>
> In APL programming you need a preponderance of non ASCII characters
> Some egs from the apl-keyboard in the code I attached:
>
> The a-key needs to send a and A and ⍺ and ⊖
> The g-key needs to send g and G and ∇ ⍒
> and so on for most of the keys. [All need to send at least 3, majority
> need to send 4]
>
> Using a modifier key like the normal use of shift makes this palatable
> Having to use a herald key means having to keep heralding -- a PITA.
>
> The original solution from Juergen was to use xmodmap and use alt as
> the modifier key -- quite normal in the APL world.
> However with Alt (=M) gone we lose M-p M-n and above all M-x which
> makes emacs close to useless
>
> My initial attempts were to figure out xmodmap in order to add (rather
> than to replace) one more modifier key. My findings:
> 1. I could not make head or tail of xmodmap
> 2. Even if I did it would be a very X-specific solution ie would not
> work outside gnu-linux (maybe unix) systems
> 3. Keyboards are inherently very variable, in particular from 'normal'
> desktop to laptop
>
> All these things considered a low-level but inside emacs (rather than
> X/OS) solution seems to be most optimal.
>
> Finally, my feeling is that if APL is to regain some popularity (which
> it enjoyed 4-5 decades ago), a variety of input methods would be good
> -- for different hardware, OSes, usage-profile, tastes.  So far I can
> see these possibilities:
> 1. Juergen's xmodmap -- use ESC for Alt
> 2. David's quail-based one
> 3. Markus Triska's quail-based one (more tex-like than David's)
> 4. An intermediate one which I am trying to explore
>
> Will be happy to hear your thoughts and experiences on this
> Rusi
>