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Re: Proposal: Bind backspace and delete like DEL in view-mode


From: Eli Zaretskii
Subject: Re: Proposal: Bind backspace and delete like DEL in view-mode
Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2001 10:39:53 +0200 (IST)

On 26 Dec 2001, Kim F. Storm wrote:

> If I enter C-h k <backspace>, emacs tells me:
> 
>         DEL runs the command delete-backward-char

Would it be better if instead it would tell this:

  <backspace> is mapped to DEL which runs the command delete-backward-char

> Sure, but how does the novice user that TAB is "\t".

Key rebinding in .emacs is not novice stuff, IMHO.  In interactive
rebinding, they don't need to know about \t.  For more advanced users,
the manual explains the \t issue in the node "Init Rebinding".

Perhaps we could have a command which will write to .emacs a Lisp
expression for binding a given key; then users could rebind a key
interactively and selectively save their bindings without dealing with
the complications.

We could also modify what "C-h c" prints like this:

  TAB (or "\t") runs the command indent-relative

or maybe like this:

  TAB runs the command indent-relative (use "\t" to rebind)

> This would allow users to write things like
> 
>         (define-key map 'DEL ...)
>         (define-key map ?\C-a ...)

I don't see how using 'DEL would solve the problem.  It is still
magically different from the mere DEL you see in "C-h c"s output.  The
fact that 'DEL is closer to DEL than "\177" does not matter enough,
since users have no way of guessing that they have to prepend the
quote.  So it's still magic.



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