Subject: Re: bug#631: the M- notation suggestion

From: Joe Wells <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2008 12:11:20 +0100

xah lee <[email-masked]> writes:

> The proposed change doesn't actually effect elisp code. It is primarly
> esthetic in nature.

This is not true.  There are many places in the Emacs Lisp code which
recognize the M- and C- notation.

First, there is the read syntax (I'm using Emacs 22.1):

  ?\M-A ⇒ 134217793
  ?\M-\C-b ⇒ 134217730

  "\M-A" ⇒ "\301" (yes, this is a bit different behavior for M-A)

Then, there is the convention of making symbol names with prefixes for
use in key bindings:

  M-f3
  M-mouse-1
  M-drag-mouse-2
  M-double-mouse-2

Then, there is the lovely kbd macro for use in key bindings:

  (kbd "C-M-<down>") ⇒ [C-M-down]

Then, there is the use of the M- and C- notation by edit-kbd-macro.

Then, there are the key-description, single-key-description, and
read-kbd-macro functions:

  (key-description [?\M-3 delete]) ⇒ "M-3 <delete>"

There is also the text-char-description function.

-- 
Joe

-- 
Heriot-Watt University is a Scottish charity
registered under charity number SC000278.