Subject: bug#43830: keyboard layout handling incompatible with rest of the OS

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 08 Oct 2020 11:50:00 +0300

> From: Juri Linkov <[email-masked]>
> Cc: [email-masked],  [email-masked]
> Date: Wed, 07 Oct 2020 22:01:47 +0300
> 
> >> We already discussed this 10 years ago, and the conclusion was that
> >> it would require too fundamental changes in how Emacs processes keystrokes.
> >
> > Can you point me to that discussion?
> 
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2005-11/msg01237.html

Thanks.

My take out of that discussion:

 . There's a patch in
   https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2005-11/msg01384.html
   which seems to allow what Paul wanted with single characters with
   modifiers, such as C-z or M-s.  That patch has a disadvantage that
   it disables AltGr, but if we install that patch as an optional
   feature, perhaps the disadvantage is not so bad?

 . The issue is more general than just a single character with a
   modifier, because key sequences such as "C-x z" will still not
   work: the 'z' will become the corresponding non-ASCII character
   when a non-US keyboard layout is used.  Therefore, the only general
   solution is for Emacs to be aware of the keyboard layout in use,
   and map the characters internally to their ASCII equivalents using
   that layout.

(The discussions also included LEIM features, but I think that is a
separate issue.)