bug#45536: [PATCH] Pretty-print keys without <> around modifiers

["Mattias Engdegård" <mattiase@acm.org>]

31 dec. 2020 kl. 05.35 skrev Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>:

> The confusion problem is still present, though -- people will see
> different ways of representing keystrokes (in examples on the web,
> etc). 

Let's not make a mole out of a molehill -- it will be all right. After all, the change is for the better.
Surely we must be able to correct past mistakes?

Remember that this is not a new notation -- 'kbd' has always accepted it, and I'm sure that .emacs files the world over contain instances of it. The manual uses it a bit everywhere, and rightly so. I'm quite sure that nobody ever got confused by it.

Actually it makes sense to let the logical notation be the default, doesn't it? There's no harm in trying it on master.

> What's the specific use case?

The NS port renders <backspace> as the backspace symbol (etc), by convention for that platform. This is done by string replacement and won't work if the key is <M-backspace> instead of M-<backspace>.

Of course we can add messy code to correct for this, but why do that locally in the NS port for this specific purpose when everyone could benefit from a clearer notation in the first place?