Re: GNU Emacs raison d'etre

[João Távora]

On Thu, May 28, 2020 at 4:00 PM Philip K. <philip@warpmail.net> wrote:
>
>
> excalamus--- via "Emacs development discussions." <emacs-devel@gnu.org> 
> writes:
>
> > What does C-g mean? Why the sequence C-g specifically? I think the
> > disconnect may be that C-g appears outwardly meaningless.
>
> I always assumed it was because C-g, when inserted literally had the
> same value as does the ASCII bell (BEL, or '\a' in C) character. When
> you open the "ascii" man-page on G and BEL even appear on the same
> line. So in some sense it's like C-m/C-i, that do the same as
> return/tab.

Yes, and those things are where they are because they're very
commonly typed and very easily typed.  I'm in no way a keyboard
historian, but I imagine Control and Meta to have had a similar role
as Shift does nowadays.  Also, Control didn't use to be where it
is today, this is why many, including me, make Caps Lock an
extra control.

João