GNU bug report logs - #631
the M- notation suggestion

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Message #92 received at 631 <at> emacsbugs.donarmstrong.com (full text, mbox):

From: xah lee <xah <at> xahlee.org>
To: Joe Wells <jbw <at> macs.hw.ac.uk>
Cc: 631 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, Yavor Doganov <yavor <at> gnu.org>
Subject: Re: bug#631: the M- notation suggestion
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2008 04:33:01 -0700

The change suggested is only about in emacs manual, emacs tutorial,  
and in menus.

There is no proposal to change emacs lisp's keyboard macro or elisp  
functions.

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄

On Aug 4, 2008, at 4:11 AM, Joe Wells wrote:

xah lee <xah <at> xahlee.org> 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.


☄

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