Re: encoded-kbd-mode

[Kenichi Handa <handa@m17n.org>]

In article <E1HXmsR-0000yZ-2g@fencepost.gnu.org>, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> Would you please explain to me the cause of the problems
> in converting Meta characters?  I want to fully understand
> why binding (meta ?é) won't work on Windows.

Encoded-kdb-mode is designed to convert raw-byte event
sequence into character event sequence by utilizing keymap
look-up mechanism.  So, it creates key-translation-map that
maps raw-byte events to proper commands or to deeper maps.

To make it handle a raw-byte event with modifers, we must
create key-bindings for all combinations of modifiers.  It
may leads to combinatorial-explosion.  We may be able to
catch all events by [t], but that requires another event
parsing state (extract modifiers from the event, remember it
in some variable, delete modifiers from the event, feed it
again to key-translation-map, modify the last character
event generator to handle the remembered modifiers, etc).

Another anxiety is for those Windows user who have already
found this workaround:
  (global-set-key [?\M-\351] ...)
If we make [?\M-é] work for Windows now, the above setting
stops working.  I think people accept such a breakage more
tolerantly if the change is for emacs-unicode.

---
Kenichi Handa
handa@m17n.org