Re: M-x mystery

[Teemu Likonen <tlikonen@iki.fi>]

* 2012-01-02T09:37:15-08:00 * Silvio Levy wrote:

> And that's what I don't understand. It's one thing for <ESC> x to be
> treated as M-x because some people lack that alt key, but for emacs to
> *convert* the keycode <alt>x to <ESC> x seems to me like poor design.

That's a historical Unix text terminal thing. All input must have a
"slot" in the current character set. That is, everything must be a
character (code). There is this concept of Meta key which is produced by
Esc in today's keyboards. Its Ascii code is 27 so it's a character (kind
of).

If we want to use Alt key in text terminals we must decide which
character (code) it produces. Well, the choice has already been made for
us. Alt+x was chosen to insert Meta x so that it's easier to type those
Meta key combinations.

Emacs in Unix text terminals is tied to this design of text terminals
(remember, you can use them through a modem/serial line). Emacs's
graphical user interface does not _need_ to be as limited but apparently
developers want it to be as compatible as possible anyway - and I agree
with them.