Re: Modifier Keys and the Archaic Meta Key

[Christopher Dimech]

Not instantly, that is agreed. But we can start with adding
the Key-Mnemonics 'A' and 'P'. We can call the key with Priority
2, the Alternate Key 'A'.

So nomenclature will be, by priority and Mnemonics:

Control (C), Alternate (A,M), Hyper(H), Shift(S), Super(P,s).

In Emacs Documentation, particularly in the Brief Emacs Tutorial, the
Alternate Key can be described together with a mention of Known Key
Associations (e.g., Alt, Meta).

By simply adding the two Mnemonics and changing the wording in the Emacs
Documentation (i.e., Emacs Tutorial and Emacs Manual) a planned process
can start.

Summary:

* Introduce 'A' and 'P' as Key Mnemonics for Alternate Key and Super Key.

* Change Emacs Documentation to use 'A' rather than 'M'.  But then state
in tutorial and manual of the additional mnemonic 'M' that can been found
in historical documentation.  This would not require everybody to change
every document there is out there.  But at least get these with the Official
Gnu Packages, in a period of a year, say.

Regards
Christopher


> Sent: Sunday, October 25, 2020 at 12:35 PM
> From: "Gregory Heytings" <ghe@sdf.org>
> To: "Christopher Dimech" <dimech@gmx.com>
> Cc: "Help Gnu Emacs" <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
> Subject: Re: Modifier Keys and the Archaic Meta Key
>
>
> >
> > Priority 1: Control Key 'C'
> > Priority 2: Alternate Key 'A'
> > Priority 3: Hyper Key 'H'
> > Priority 4: Super Key 'P' (for middle letter, instead of 's')
> > Priority 5: Shift Key 'S'
> >
> > This evaluation and modifications outlined is useful for users today,
> > whilst continuing with archaic elaboration on 1975 Lisp Keyboards has
> > become unproductive for new users.
> >
>
> You cannot change thirty years of digital and printed documentation,
> configuration files, websites, and so forth.  Moreover the meta key is not
> only used by GNU Emacs, it is also used by other GNU software such as GDB
> or Bash (and in general all software that use the readline library).  And
> Meta is not only (on most keyboards) Alt, it is also Escape.
>