rbbb@RICE.EDU (David Chase) (12/05/86)
If you are in a world where the key binding for "search-forward" is not a constant, perhaps you should the big step of creating a variable called "CTRL-S-EQUIVALENT", load terminal-dependent initialization files, and set it to the CTRL-S equivalent sent by the various terminals. Obviously, you must use this variable in all code that expects to read a search character. Several of us here (Rice graduate students) do this for the function key maps on a Visual 200, Wyse 75, Sun 2, and IBM RT. It simplifies life a lot. (enter dogma mode) I must say that code depending upon key bindings has always seemed phenomenally stupid and unportable to me. MOST terminals (well, most terminals that I have used since I stopped punching cards) have a plethora of function keys, literal shitloads of them. If you admit the possibility of using a few prefixes (ESC, ^X, ^C are all good, because they are easy to type), then there are more function keys then you would ever want to use. Now, I realize that it is handy to have all emacses use the same key bindings so that I will feel immediately at home wherever I go, but 99% of the time I am using a machine where I have a profile, using a familiar terminal with a pile of function keys. It seems that I should make things as easy as possible in the usual case. To me, function keys are easier than control sequences (^X^C, ESC-v, ESC-^V, ^X^V) because there are fewer keystrokes for me to type. I realize that my fingers leave the home row when I use function keys, but I am not exactly comfortable typing at maximum speed when I type control sequences anyway. If a terminal has usurped ^S and ^Q, then I can live without them. Meta keys are great, but not all terminals that I use have meta keys so I cannot depend on them. (leave dogma mode) David (reenter dogma mode) and trailers are stupid, especially when the sender gets sleepy and appends more than one. If I wanted to read Zippy-isms, I would read Zippy comics. Let's have more subject lines like "freeze frame" (quality, not quantity). It's not like there is a line eater for the ends of messages. (leave dogma mode again)
bader@spice.cs.cmu.edu (Miles Bader) (12/06/86)
Hemlock, the emacs-type editor in spice lisp has a really wonderful idea-- logical keys. That way, the programs which use command-keys can specify :abort-command (not the actual name) instead of '^G' or :search-forward-command instead of '^S'. By simply changing the mapping for one of the logical keys, you can change *every* occurance of recursive-edit from ^R to something else. It seems like it would be simply enough to have variables containing the characters for such things and use them instead of constants, but some consistency would obviously have to be maintained, and it would mean changing a lot of existing code ...