Re: inputting characters by hexadigit

[Juri Linkov <juri@jurta.org>]

>> (Though one thing that springs to mind is to allow C-q ## to insert
>> a literal #...
>
> Maybe C-q # SPC (and C-q ? SPC, ...) could be used, indeed.  But it's
> still yet-another-rule to learn.

The beauty of using standard Emacs Lisp notations is that we don't have
to invent another escaping syntax.  So with the latest patch it is
possible to insert them with

    C-q ?#
    C-q ??
    C-q \#
    C-q \?
    C-q \\

All these notations are well documented in Emacs manuals.

> I think a good solution should start by scrapping the C-q <octal>
> corner case, and replace it with something that does not interfere as
> much with C-q <char> and which additionally accepts hexadecimal (and
> maybe more such as char names, ...).

I agree with your idea of separating input by number.  To do this
we should find only one special key to activate input by number.
I propose `RET'.  Currently `C-q RET' inserts "^M".  This character
is rarely needed to insert since more useful line-feed is on `C-q C-j'.
And it is more natural to insert ^M by using `C-q C-m'.

-- 
Juri Linkov
http://www.jurta.org/emacs/