Re: ESC vs Meta for shifted keys

[Robert Pluim]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> So Iʼve (finally) got an actual Meta key configured on my
>> keyboard. Iʼve always believed that Esc-as-prefix and Meta were
>> interchangable, but that doesnʼt seem to be the case:
>
> The ESC <-> Meta equivalence only holds for characters, not for
> "special keys" such as `left`, indeed.  Not sure why.

OK.

>> So this looks like Emacs is not taking into account the SHIFT modifier
>> here?
>
> What makes you think so?  The "translated from" clearly shows that Emacs
> saw the shift just fine.

You're right, I misinterpreted the results. It looks like emacs
ignores the shift if thereʼs no separate binding for the shifted
version, and runs whatever's bound to the unshifted version.

>> Or is there some default keyboard translation going on that I
>> need to disable?
>
> Why would you need to disable it?
> IOW which part of "running left-word when I hit M-S-<left>" annoys you?

This came up when running org, inside a table, where M-S-<left> and
M-<left> do different things, and neither are the same as
ESC-S-<left>. If the Esc <-> Meta were true here they would be easier
for me to type, although I can always rebind the ESC versions (or
retrain my fingers)

Robert