Re: if vs. when vs. and: style question

["Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com>]

Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:

>> Notice, that I asked the reader to compare the ease of input.
>
> Before I comment further, let me say that I agree with your point.
>
>> =>  super easy, two keys to type.
>> The unicode correspondance?  I would start typing C-x 8 RET double TAB
>> and not find it in the list.  So I would have to launch clisp,
>>    C-- slime RET clisp RET
>> wait for it to boot then type:
>>    (lschar :name "RIGHT_ARROW") RET
>> the search for double, and not find it, then copy and paste it from your
>> message, 
>>    (char-name #\⇒)
>> obtain the character name as "RIGHTWARDS_DOUBLE_ARROW", then type
>>    C-x 8 RET rightward double arrow RET
>> which, even if I had know it from the start, is still much more
>> difficult to type than just =>.
>
> Yes and no.  Yes, if you haven't used a particular Unicode char
> before or use it rarely.  No, if you use it often.
>
> If you use a particular Unicode character often, just give its
> insertion a command and bind that to a key.  If you have 30 such
> chars, put them all on a prefix key.  Or use completion on their
> command names (names you created, so easy for you to type, remember,
> complete to,...).
>
> IOW, it's not a big deal to insert Unicode characters, especially
> if you insert the same ones over and over.  You do not need to use
> `C-x 8 RET' each time.

While I agree that everything's better when everything's done in emacs,
I still use a few other programs than emacs, were I have text to edit. 

Therefore, I configured greek letters and a few mathematical symbols and
arrows, with a xmodmap that I use on my linux boxes.

Unfortunately, there is also a MacOSX box, and there the keyboard layout
is much less editable (once upon a time, there was a version of NeXTSTEP
or MacOSX that had editable keyboard layout, but I don't know if this is
still possible in Yosemite).

And I won't say about MS-Windows, happily I don't use it to edit text.


So while using emacs OR Linux everything can be bliss, there are still
often cases where you have to use not emacs and not Linux, or not your
own computer.


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-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                 http://www.informatimago.com/
“The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a
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