Re: Emacs Language Sensitive Editing

[Stephen Leake <stephen.a.leake.1@gsfc.nasa.gov>]

Peter Hermann <ica2ph@iris16.csv.ica.uni-stuttgart.de> writes:

> unfortunately, I never familiarized with emacs
> in spite of a number of initial attempts:
> The major obstacle are those unspeakable special keystroke sequences
> which I can not map on my different keyboard brands (PC, DEC, SGI, Sun).

Actually, the default Emacs keystrokes only require the control key
and the ASCII keys. They were specifically designed to not require
modification on _any_ system; they work over telnet, for example.

However, most people prefer to use the "meta" or "alt" keystrokes,
instead of the equivalent control keystrokes, because they require
fewer motions.

If you do that, you do have to learn how to configure your computer to
generate the keycodes Emacs expects when you hit a key. Sometimes you
can do this within Emacs, sometimes you must use OS or Windowing
system commands.

I have a complete set of function key bindings that I carry with me to
each machine that I use Emacs on. It can take a couple hours to figure
out how to adapt it to the new keyboard/Windowing/OS. Then I'm up and
running, with nothing more to learn. You can see my Emacs setup at
http://users.erols.com/leakstan/Stephe/emacs/index.html . 

But most of the time I'm using my Windows PC on my desk, with an X
window open on another system, running Emacs there. So the keyboard
handling is always the same; makes it easier. When I actually have to
type on a Sun keyboard, my fingers get confused! I long for the day
when all computers will have infrared interfaces to keyboards, and I
can carry mine around with me :).

> I wonder how people are using their specific keyboards. (e.g. where
> is "The Meta Key", where the ESC, gold, etc. etc.) Advice is
> welcome.

The easiest way to find out what keycodes each key emits is to start
Emacs, hit the key, and then hit C-h l. This shows the last hundred or
so keystrokes, in terms that Emacs understands. You can also use C-h k
to see the definition of a particular key.

-- 
-- Stephe