Re: Why use CTL-x CTL-c to quit instead of CTL-x CTL-q?

[Jean Louis]

* Hongyi Zhao <hongyi.zhao@gmail.com> [2021-04-06 05:50]:
> Obviously, from a mnemonic perspective, CTL-x CTL-q is more intuitive
> than CTL-x CTL-c.

To customize it personally, user may do following:

(global-set-key (kbd "C-x C-q") 'save-buffers-kill-terminal)

That is probably related to computer history. At some point of time
one could quit many applications with ESC or ESCAPE, that one is more
logical to me, today ESC does not work as expected. In Emacs Escape
has different meaning, but I almost never use it.

I may guess that logic comes from Control-C on terminal to abort
action, and that Emacs adopted CTRL-C with the prefix.

More about Control-C: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control-C

Thus the meaning comes from computer history.

Quote:

"Control+C ("C for Cancel")[3] was part of various Digital Equipment
operating systems, including TOPS-10 and TOPS-20. Its popularity as an
abort command was adopted by other systems including Unix."

Meanings of "cancel" and "quit" are different, though similar. My
dictionary Wordnet does not tell me they are synonyms, I would say
they are.

When program is funning furiously on terminal we often "cancel" it
with CTRL-C, but don't quit like saying "Good bye" to program, we
cancel the execution abruptly. From that logic probably it was adopted
in Emacs.

Author RMS and few experienced users of that time would know it.

-- 
Jean

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