Re: Using AltGr as standard modifier key in emacs

[Shahab Shahsavari Alavidjeh]

Yuri Khan <yuri.v.khan@gmail.com> writes:

> On Tue, Oct 13, 2015 at 7:11 PM, Shahab Shahsavari Alavidjeh
> <zzgraph@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Why I don't simply use my D.E. input method support and keyboard layout
>> switcher instead?
>>
>> I'm currently using it, that's my best option right now, but then I
>> should switch keyboard layouts whenever I want to run a command in emacs
>> or even when I want to save a file to disk.
>

>
>
> It would be a great help if modifiers and certain prefixes caused
> Emacs to ignore the active layout and interpret the base keys
> according to the primary layout, which will be one of Latin layouts in
> most cases. (Which exact Latin layout will vary from user to user — US
> QWERTY, German QWERTZ, French AZERTY, Dvorak, Colemak, etc.)
>

Thanks Yuri

I completely agree with you on that, this approach is way better and
more practical. And it can completely solve my problem.

> There are workarounds involving key-translation-map to make Emacs
> pretend that it got C-q when it gets C-й, but they are ugly,
> unreliable, and incomplete. Ideally, it should happen at the
> underlying OS integration boundary.

While it's bound to C-q to pass non-ASCII characters to Emacs as
keybindings, which is briefly documented here

   
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Init-Non_002dASCII.html#Init-Non_002dASCII

There should be no problem for Emacs to accept other combinations of
M- C- with non-ASCII characters as ASCII equivalent to the key pressed
on relevant primary keyboard layout.

But I think the problem with AltGr still is a valid problem, because it
makes huge inconsistency between Emacs's own quail layouts, where many
of them already standardized with AltGr as modifier in graphical
environment layouts.

IMO what you proposed is a very good and practical feature to get
implemented in Emacs. And it will make life a lot easier for people
using non-Latin scripts to use Emacs. But I think of AltGr problem as a
bug, which if get resolved can temporarily solve the problem for these
people (if there's any besides me!) before the feature you proposed get
implemented.