Re: Physical keyboard events

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Cecilio.

On Tue, Oct 29, 2024 at 19:20:43 +0100, Cecilio Pardo wrote:
> On 29/10/2024 18:13, Alan Mackenzie wrote:

> > I envisage these leading to trouble.

> > For example, my KVM box intercepts a sufficiently rapid double press on
> > (either) Control key, and then expects a CR to switch computers, or ESC
> > to cancel (and maybe there are other keys I don't know about).

> > I quite frequently start typing a command by pressing the Control key,
> > then change my mind and let it go again.  I might sometimes hold that
> > key while trying to decide what I want to do.  The same surely applies
> > to Meta as well.

> The way I hope to implement it, there will be no interference if you 
> don't activate it. Many editors such as VSCode and the ones from 
> JetBrains use this, and people appreciate it.

Somebody not activating it will not have access to the commands which
other people assign to these new key combinations.  That could be a
problem.

> > To make this work on a tty would involve fancy work on the keyboard
> > layout if it's even possible.  On a Linux console, it might even need
> > enhancements to the kernel.

> > I'm not sure binding our shift keys to commands, or even prefixes, is a
> > good idea.

> I was planning for GUI systems alone.

That's a very un-Emacs like thing to do.  Apart from specifically
graphicky things, the convention is that features are available
regardless of whether on a GUI or a TUI.  For this reason, bindings like
C-<up> are frowned upon, although they are used in some places (hello,
Org!).

> Thanks.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).