crm@duke.UUCP (Charlie Martin) (07/22/86)
Newsgroups: net.emacs Subject: Re: Key Bindings and Command Definitions Summary: Well, yeah, sure, but.... Expires: References: <14754@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <600@bcsaic.UUCP> <7934@duke.duke.UUCP> <124@spp5.UUCP> Sender: Reply-To: crm@duke.UUCP (Charlie Martin) Followup-To: Distribution: Organization: Duke University, Durham NC Keywords: In article <124@spp5.UUCP> brahms@spp5.UUCP (Bradley S. Brahms) writes: >In article <7934@duke.duke.UUCP> crm@duke.UUCP (Charlie Martin) writes: >> > >One, I don't think that you could get everyone to agree to a standard set >of bindings. I, for one, much prefer the gosling/unipress bindings over >the GNU bindings. But the bindings is only part of the story if anyone >really wants to consider a standard. > >There also must be a standard for what the commands actually do. For >instance, ^T (transpose-character) has one of two meanings, transpose two >character before the point or transpose the character before and at the >point. I have seen both. How about searches. Is a search incremental or >not? Where does it leave you? At the beginning or at the end or the >search string? If you do another search, how to you reuse the last search >argument? A ^S^S ala Unipress or a ^S^M ala micro-emacs? How about ^U^V? >In TOPS-20 emacs, that move the point four lines, but in most emacses it >means move four screen fulls. .... >Standards are nice, but they never satisfy everyone. If you are using a >true emacs that IS extensible, then let it go at that and maybe provide a >macro file that will set up the GNU-standard or Gosling-standard or what >have you. > Well, I was having a sort of incoherent day when I posted the original, so it wasn't the clearest thing I've ever written -- but I think we're in substantial agreement. IF an EMACS default key-binding and behavior set could be agreed upon, THEN we could build reconfigurations for the various different EMACSen that would establish that binding. It's clear there is some "market" for this sort of thing -- haven't we already seen a number of postings to the effect of "can someone send me a GNU binding that sets me up for UniPress/CCA/EDT/vi/teco/SOS"? (Actually, there is something perversely fascinating about the idea of a TECO mode for GNU). After we do that, we can work on a standard EMACS extension language. Then we can look into world hunger and eliminating politicans, and other great goods for mankind. I admit I put these all together because I suspect they are equally hard. On the other hand, GNU may become the standard: I know of several organizations around that have made GNU the "official" EMACS and if you want UniPress you can buy it out of your OWN grant money. -- Charlie Martin (...mcnc!duke!crm)