Re: Semi-unhelpful error message given when trying to (provide 'CUA-mode)

[Jan Djärv]

Richard Stallman wrote:
> > I have a patch for the X11 versions of Emacs that activates the menubar
> > when F10 is pressed.
> >
> > Once you do that, how do you select a menu item from the menu? Is there a
> > way to do that with the keyboard?  Or must the user switch to the mouse
> > for that?
>
> You use arrow keys to navigate the menu and enter/return to select an item.
>  Using the keyboard is the right thing.
>
> Some X toolkits have conventions for using the keyboard to activate menus
> and menu items.  I am not sure what they are; do you know? To what extent
> do they work with Emacs?  Is your patch coherent with them?  Could it be?

The patch is coherent in that it implements opening menus on F10, which is 
standard for many toolkits.

Another way to activate menus is with accelerator keys, usually Alt + the 
first letter in the menu entry (the letter in question is underlined in the 
menu).  That would be Alt+F for File.  On Mac it is the Command key instead of 
Alt, but the principle is the same.  When a menu has been opened there may be 
more accelerators (like S for Save), so instead of using the arrow to navigate 
down to Save and then press RET, you can press just S or Alt+S to select Save.

My patch does not implement this, but it is quite easy to do in Lesstif/Motif 
and Gtk+ (harder in Lucid).  The thing is to decide which accelerators to use 
and how to represent them in the current lisp menu structures.  Another thing 
it to figure out how to avoid collisions, so that for example, File and 
Fortran-mode doesn't both use F, and of course only use accelerator keys if 
Alt is different from Meta.

This is more work, so I have not started to look in to it.  I'll will do that 
after the release though.

        Jan D.