Re: Key bindings proposal

[Uday S Reddy]

Lennart Borgman writes:

> Yes, it is.
> 
> There were three main things I wanted to work:
> - Using the windows keys (or other key, for example shift-lock) as
> Emacs META so that Alt key could be freed.
> - Getting sticky keys (accessibility) to work.
> - Getting menus to work. The events where handled in wrong order, but
> I think it is hard to notice this unless you use the Alt keys to acces
> the menus. (BTW Firefox had a similar bug.)
> 
> Later I have put some other patches there too.

I agree with Juanma that these things do not seem to warrant a fork.
These are general features that Gnu Emacs can and should have for
supporting Windows.  There is no incompatibility.

(I don't know if you were around then, but the original development of
Emacs for Windows also happened in a sort-of fork, called NT Emacs.
That has now been integrated with Gnu Emacs.)

> And once again: I do not consider it a fork. Some people have indeed
> asked me to make it a fork but I have stayed here, hoping things
> should change.

I don't know the history, but I would encourage you to stay on and do
whatever is necessary to get the changes accepted.  There can be quite
a bit of work involved in getting there, to document, test, and fit
things into the existing structure.  I do some of such work for VM,
trying to integrate the add-ons that have been contributed over the
years.  It does involve quite a bit of work even when the packages are
quite straightforward.  There is quite a bit of distance between a
prototype (what is often contributed) and a finished product (what
goes into the system).

> And I also find it a bit hopeful. Using the right and left windows
> keys as Emacs META requires that a low level keyboard hook is used.
> Just read the documentation at MS to see that. (I have given link to
> it previously.)

Like Juanma, I also don't know why it is essential to use the Windows
key as meta.  I am able to use Alt as the meta key in Emacs and also
get Alt+TAB to switch W32 windows.  I can momentarily depress Alt to
activate the menubar.  

> > Also, note that I've said "to make it appealing to Windows users", not
> > "to make it a clone of every Windows application". Of course if you
> > need that *everything* works in Emacs *exactly* as in Notepad, then
> > use Notepad.
> 
> I would be glad if you (and others) did not try to make other people look
> silly.

Indeed, it would be good to drop the frequent references to Notepad.
As far as I know, the Notepad-users and Emacs-users are mutually
exclusive.  So, Notepad is not at issue.

Cheers,
Uday