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From: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Newsgroups: net.emacs
Subject: Re: Concepts with almost-META keys
Message-ID: <82@spar.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 12-Feb-85 18:00:08 EST
Article-I.D.: spar.82
Posted: Tue Feb 12 18:00:08 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 13-Feb-85 17:12:50 EST
References: <229@uwstat.UUCP> <3083@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: ellis@max.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Distribution: net
Organization: Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, CA
Lines: 33

From Chris Torek:
>While the problem is potentially repairable by changing Emacs to have
>full 256-entry keymaps, we decided not to even attempt *that*.
>Instead, we modified undo and incremental search to use an Emacs
>variable to control which key(s?) terminate the undo or search.  Set
>this to ^G (or whatever you prefer), and meta keys "work" again.

    incr-search.ml, as we received it from UniPress, has a global
    variable called `search-exit-char' that gets initialized to
     provided you haven't already initialized it to a
    non-zero value. Placing lines like:

(declare-global search-exit-char)
(setq search-exit-char "\^^")

    ..into your .emacs_pro would redefine this character from 
    to control carat. If you want to make the character , I believe
    you'll have to load incr_search first and then reset this variable
    to zero.

    Incidentally, the  key is frightfully overloaded in most EMACSes
    I've used. This is bad enough; but in Gosmacs, if your terminal has a
    genuine meta-shift key, you can find yourself unexpectedly invoking
    unwanted ESCAPE functions at the worst possible moments.

    For instance, you cannot type any meta-key while in the minibuf, because
    meta-keys are immediately remapped into ESCAPE sequences, and ESCAPE has
    the additional function of forcing keyword/filename recognition when in
    the minibuf. I used to ruin plenty of files this way when I tried to
    edit the filename in a ^X^W command, only to have Gosmacs write into the
    first file that happened to match the filename I was trying to edit!

-michael