Re: OT: M-S-$ Not Working

[Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>]

Maxim Nikulin <manikulin@gmail.com> writes:

> On 06/02/2021 13:28, Tim Cross wrote:
>>
>> In general, standard Emacs key bindings are robust and reliable. If a
>> standard key binding like M-S $ doesn't work, first step is to try emacs
>> -Q.
>
> Sorry, but I do not agree that key bindings are robust in emacs. I use
> English and Russian keyboard layouts. Last years most of application
> could handle shortcuts independently of active layout (E.g. Ctrl+C and
> Ctrl+V works for copy-paste even if Russian layout is currently chosen.)
> In Emacs, only Control + Latin C works, Control + Cyrillic S (the same
> physical key) is undefined. Location of punctuation symbols depends on
> active layout, "$" is absent in Russian layout at all. It is extremely
> inconvenient to switch to US layout before any shortcut. Emacs uses its
> own input methods, but it means that desktop environment should treat
> emacs in a special way in respect to keyboard layouts. I have a kind of
> solution, I found its variants in blog posts. It is quite tricky, so I
> do not consider it as reliable and suitable for any user.

As I'm limited by the weakness of only understanding one alphabet, I
don't have any experience of things once you move away from an 'english'
based alphabet. However, I do find it surprising there isn't a simpler
solution to switch between the different layouts in a consistent way
which updates key bindings to something appropriate. I've not seen many
editors with the same level of support for different alphabets and
writing direction as Emacs and there are many keyborad layouts which
don't include the '$' key. At the end of the day, it really just comes
down to mapping of key codes - the 'image' on the key itself (and even
the location) is largely irrelevant. I imagine 'live' switching between
different input methods could be very complicated, but making the
complicated easy is something Emacs tends to be good at.

Were you able to get any assistance with this on the Emacs devel list?
Like it or not, computers are very english centric (and US english at
that). Maybe the issues you have encountered just need to be highlighted
and for there to be someone able to assist to enable the situation to be
improved? It may be a simple as improving the mapping of key codes and
tweaking the key translation table to improve the situation? If you
haven't done so, I would encourage you to start a new thread on
emacs-devel where you outline your key binding issues. I have frequently
found solutions on blogs and other forums only to find later there is a
far easier solution. I would expect many Russian speaking users have
encountered the same challenges. The Emacs devs have always seemed
pretty open to improving support for different languages and character
sets and once they understand the issue, will typically respond with
improvements fairly quickly provided someone is will ing to help test
etc. The hard part is defining the issue - once it is understood, a
solution is often not too far away.

--
Tim Cross