Re: local key swap? alternatives?

[Francisco Borges]

» On Thu, Sep 01, 2005 at 10:49AM -0600, Kevin Rodgers wrote:

> Francisco Borges wrote:
> > Long ago I came with the idea to swap keys in LaTeX buffers to be able
> > to type popular LaTeX characters without SHIFT, namely $%^&*()_{}.

> How about:
>
> (defun swap-keys (key-1 key-2 &optional keymap)
>   "*Swap the bindings of KEY-1 and KEY-2.
> Optional arg KEYMAP defaults to the global keymap; with a prefix arg,
> the local keymap."
>   (interactive (list (read-key-sequence "Swap key: ")
>                      (read-key-sequence "Swap with key: ")
>                      (if current-prefix-arg
>                          (current-local-map)
>                        (current-global-map))))
>   (let ((binding-1 (lookup-key keymap key-1))
>         (binding-2 (lookup-key keymap key-2)))
>     (define-key keymap key-1 binding-2)
>     (define-key keymap key-2 binding-1)
>     (when (interactive-p)
>       (message "%s runs the command %s; %s runs the command %s"
>                key-1 (lookup-key keymap key-1 t)
>                key-2 (lookup-key keymap key-2 t)))))
> (swap-keys "$" "4" latex-mode-map)
> (swap-keys "%" "5" latex-mode-map)

That does not work because both keys are bound to
self-insert-command. That's the reason I had failed to do it myself.

I (finally) solved the problem by doing something as ugly as:

(defun my-four ()
  (interactive)
  (insert-char (string-to-char "4") 1))

(defun my-dollar ()
  (interactive)
  (insert-char (string-to-char "$") 1))

(local-set-key "$" (quote my-four))
(local-set-key "4" (quote my-dollar))

Would there be a better way to do it? I don't really know Lisp...

I think that the right thing to do is to use a function such as the one
you send and treat self-insert-command cases specially, but with my
knowledge of Lisp making these changes to the code above would take more
than the free time I have to spend on it...

Cheers,
Francisco.