Subject: bug#9897: 24.0.90; w32 control character configuration is severely lacking compared to ns-win.el

From: Tim Visher <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 21:39:45 -0400

On Sat, Oct 29, 2011 at 12:03 AM, Jason Rumney <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Tim Visher <[email-masked]> writes:
>
>> I'm essentially looking for modifier key parity with ns ala:
>>
>> http://bzr.savannah.gnu.org/lh/emacs/trunk/annotate/head:/lisp/term/ns-win.el#L182
>>
>> On Windows, that list would probably look like:
>>
>>     (defvaralias 'pc-allow-anti-aliasing 'pc-antialias-text)

My point with these and the many lines you inlined pointing me to the
various w32-* variables is that the ns-* variables are more robust and
easier to use than the w32 variables. For instance, ns-* exposes
right, left, and both as variables, while w32 only exposes right/left.
ns-* also exposes option, command, and control, while w32-* exposes
none of alt/windows/control, and leaves it to be configured through
hard-swapping the keys through registry hacks.

>>     (defvaralias 'pc-control-modifier 'pc-control-modifier)
>>     (defvaralias 'pc-right-control-modifier 'pc-right-control-modifier)
>>     (defvaralias 'pc-alt-modifier 'pc-alt-modifier)
>
> Standard keyboard keys can be remapped outside of Emacs. Commonly this
> is done to swap left-control and caps-lock, for example, see
> http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/SwapControlAltAndCapsLock

My point is not that it's impossible to remap these keys outside of
emacs. My point is that the mac os remapping feature is far more
robust than the windows feature. For me, I am unable to remap these
keys outside of emacs as I need to be able to pair program with other
people on these machines at work. I just want them to be remapped
inside emacs, which I can do easily on os x, but not at all on
windows.

The reason that I ran up against this at all is that I'm trying to
move away from having caps lock be control as I've begun to experience
emacs pinky. I would like to have the command/alt key be control,
option/windows key be meta, and control/[apps|control] be super on the
two platforms, only in emacs. This is possible on the mac but not
possible on windows.

>>     (defvaralias 'pc-function-modifier 'pc-function-modifier)
>
> No idea which key you mean here. If you mean the Fn key present on some
> laptop keyboards, I beleive this is handled by the keyboard hardware or
> low level drivers, and not exposed by the OS.

It may or may not be exposed by the OS, but on the Mac it is exposed.
If it's not possible because of low-level operating system details, I
understand, and perhaps that should be documented, but the point is
that when comparing the configurability of the two systems, windows is
lagging behind the mac by leaps and bounds.