Re: Insert Euro symbol

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@is.elta.co.il> writes:
> It doesn't sound like a good idea to have yet another, 3rd 
> way of producing non-ASCII characters.  C-x 8 should be supported for 
> back compatibility, but do we really want to extend it?

Yes.

It's very convenient for people who don't use a latin-x input method
normally but want to only insert a character or two.  I use it all the
time, and I'd be very annoyed if I had to fuck around with switching
input methods just to type my occasional one character.

I didn't even know that C-x 8 is defined to insert `latin-1' characters,
I just though it was a handy package for inserting common characters
from the non-ASCII latin set.  To me having it be able to insert the
euro sign sounds like a natural and useful extension.

Of course, maybe there's a better _implementation_ (maybe along the
lines that Stefan suggested), but please don't `deprecate' the
functionality -- I really like it and use it often.

> If you agree that C-x 8 is deprecated, C-x 9 is a step in the wrong 
> direction.

I agree about this, though; it would be pretty silly to have `C-x 9'
etc., because I don't think it's natural for anyone to think that way
(even if it would be somehow convenient for the implementation, though
I doubt even that's the case).

You're right that if we simply think of C-x 8 as being `insert handy
non-ASCII characters' (as indeed I do) then there's the problem of
deciding `which characters?' especially when all of unicode becomes a
possibility.  But that's not a reason to get rid of the interface, I
think, just a reason to be judicious when extending it.

-Miles
-- 
"Most attacks seem to take place at night, during a rainstorm, uphill,
 where four map sheets join."   -- Anon. British Officer in WW I