[Nano-devel] are there users of <Esc> M-X in order to do ^X?

[Benno Schulenberg]

Hi all,

When you run 'nano --ignore +2,11 README' and type M-H,
smarthome gets toggled.  Good, and normal.  But when you
type: <Esc> M-H...  Uh, it deletes a character.  Sure,
M-H equals "Esc H", and "Esc Esc H" equals ^H, which is
backspace, so this is logical.  But still... I think it
is surprising.

Now type: <Esc> <Esc> M-H.  A literal h is entered.
Strange.  Three escapes in a row are discarded.  Why?
Why not discard just two of them?

I think that whenever a key is pressed while either
Ctrl or Alt is being held, any preceding presses of
<Esc> should be ignored.  This is already the case
for Ctrl.  I propose to implement it also for Alt --
that is: Meta.  In other words: only when presses
of the <Esc> key are followed by a key in printable
ASCII range (0x20 to 0x7E) are those Escapes heeded
and compose together with the ASCII key an escape
sequence.  In all other cases the Escs are discarded.

If there are any people who use the combination of
<Esc> M-X to enter a ^X, they will be badly surprised.

Okay to proceed anyway?

Benno

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