Re: [RFC] New "kbd" macro?

[Rasmus <rasmus@gmx.us>]

Hi Nicolas,

Thanks for looking into this.

Nicolas Goaziou <mail@nicolasgoaziou.fr> writes:

> I would like to submit a new minor macro for integration within Org: the
> "kbd" macro.
>
> The "kbd" macro focuses on normalizing keybinding during export. For
> example, during Texinfo export, {{{kbd(v SPC)}}} becomes 
>
>   @kbd{v @key{SPC}}
>
> whereas in another back-end, it becomes
>
>   v <SPC>
>
> More specifically:
>
>   Within {{{kbd(...)}}}, the following case-sensitive keys are wrapped
>   within angle brackets: SPC, RET, LFD, TAB, BS, ESC, DELETE, SHIFT,
>   CTRL, META, up, down, left, right.

(I wish there was a more light-weight syntax for macros...  Maybe we
should provide something similar to C-c C-l for inserting them...)

> With an optional argument, it can wrap the key-binding within verbatim
> or code markup:
>
>   {{{kbd(v SPC,code)}}}      =>  ~v <SPC>~
>
>   {{{kbd(v SPC,verbatim)}}}  =>  =v <SPC>=
>
> Other markup is not implemented because, in that case, you can wrap
> appropriate characters around the macro.

I am not sure where it makes sense to print in "plain" text as opposed to
code or verbatim by default.  Anyway, I think it makes sense to add
specific export mechanisms for several backends, which might make it
possible to remove that argument.

- HTML, MD :: as Kaushal points out, please use <kbd>.</kbd>.

- LaTeX :: it’s complicated, as e.g. keys needs to be translated in a specific
  way, depending on the package that is being used, e.g. "libertinekey",
  "menukeys" or whatnot.  We should not add new default packages IMO.  We
  could always support a couple of different packages, but default to
  something like "\fbox{\ttfamily %s}".  Adding support for other packages
  reduces to mapping specific sequences, like "SPC" to something like
  "\LKeySpace".

- ODT :: it should be possible to use something like Biolinium or
  Libertinus keyboard fonts if we just have an alist mapping sequences
  like CTRL to the right unicode symbol (E.g. U+E173 here), but the place
  in the font would probably depend on the font. So unless there’s a
  standard it would be risky.  Since fonts aren’t (typically?) embedded in
  ODT it might be better to add a new odt style that prints the words in
  the mono font inside a box, i.e. the equivalent of "\fbox{\ttfamily %s}".

- Texinfo :: already supported.

Rasmus

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