[comp.emacs] Question about incremental search

rms@GNU.AI.MIT.EDU (Richard Stallman) (05/03/91)

Would you like Emacs 19 to use RET rather than ESC
as the character for exiting an incremental search?
The character LFD would become the way to include a newline
in a search string.

The advantage I know of is that it would work better with
escape sequences such as are used when a terminal has no Meta key
and such as are sent by function keys on many terminals.

The disadvantage I know of is that it will be less intuitive to search
for a string containing a newline.

I'm interested in hearing votes of yes or no, but votes that come with
reasons will give more help in deciding what's best.  Most helpful
would be to tell me about advantages or disadvantages I don't know
about.

**PLEASE REPLY ONLY TO emacs-search-poll**.  DON'T REPLY TO help-gnu-emacs
OR POST THE REPLY AS NEWS.**  Let's not start a flame about this.