Re: single-key-description no good for Japanese and Chinese chars

[Stefan Monnier]

>> My question is this: Why do these keys have as their binding
>> `self-insert-command'?

>     Because that is the binding for all characters of that group.

> That sounds like "because that's the way it is".  Care to elaborate? The
> question is not how it is done, but why it is done that way.

When someone enters such a character (typically via XIM or quail), he/she
presumably wants to insert it, so it seems eminently natural to bind all
those chars to self-insert-command.

> So what? Binding thousands of characters is something computers are good at.
> Or are you saying that that would affect performance in an unacceptable way?

What would be the benefit of binding each char individually?
I don't think it's terribly important which way it's done, but the current
way at least has the advantage of being less inefficient.

> If so, what's special about `self-insert-command' - why not bind them all to
> a different command, `foobar', which does what is needed, so they don't get
> in the way of the normal, simple, straightforward relations between
> `self-insert-command', `single-key-description', and `read-kbd-macro'?

I see no relation between self-insert-command and the other two.

> A program might well expect `self-insert-command' to do what it says
> straightforwardly: insert the key as a character.

What makes you think it doesn't do exactly that?

> My program did, and this new feature has hardly been released yet (AFAIK,
> it's new in Emacs 22).

I don't think this is was significantly changed since Emacs-21 (or probably
even Emacs-20.4).  So the cause of your problem might be somewhere else.
Please then tell us exactly what is the behavior you used to see compared to
what you see now.


        Stefan