Re: C-= ?

[Yuri Khan <yuri.v.khan@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Jul 19, 2015 at 2:10 PM, Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se> wrote:

>     control keycode 11 = U+0110
>
> This syntax reads: assign the shortcut C-0 (in Emacs
> notation; remember showkey has told us '0 = 11') so
> that when pressed, insert the char which has Unicode
> U+0110. (That char turns out a diamond in the ttys, so
> it must be something fancy that we will never need for
> anything else.)
>
> The Unicode (the particular code, i.e. U+0110) is
> arbitrary in the sense it doesn't matter what it is as
> long as the char isn't in use already. Make it exotic.
> When you have found one exotic char, it is easy to
> find more just by adding or subtracting one for each
> shortcut you add. It is the hexadecimal system.

If you are going to recommend people to hijack arbitrary Unicode
characters for extended keycodes, at least tell them to pick codes
from the Private Use Area (U+E000 up to and including U+F8FF). It’s
the Unicode equivalent of RFC 1918 IP addresses — guaranteed to never
have an official meaning.

You personally might not have any use for the Latin capital letter D
with stroke. But when someone from Vietnam comes around and complains
“My Đ key suddenly stopped working and instead of inserting the letter
as it’s supposed to, it throws me into a different buffer”…


Better yet, design a complete, unambiguous, international-friendly and
backward-compatible keycode system and lobby for its support
out-of-the-box in the Linux tty and Xterm.