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Alt (assuming you actually mean Meta ;) is completely unnecessary for emacs. Meta-<Key> can always be produced by pressing ESC <Key> I guess technically ctrl
by Ogre 14y ago
Alt (assuming you actually mean Meta ;) is completely unnecessary for emacs. Meta-<Key> can always be produced by pressing ESC <Key>
I guess technically ctrl is also unnecessary since you could type out whole commands with M-x (ESC x command). It wouldn't be fun, but you could do it.
- cmckay 14y agoAlthough most keyboards nowadays use Alt for Meta, they were distinct keys on some older keyboards. I personally never used an MIT Lisp machine, but I have used Sun keyboards with a Meta key. It's also fun to note that EMACS is an acronym for Escape Meta Alt Control Shift, which generally describes the experience of using it.
- Ogre 14y agoAs joke acronyms go, I preferred "Eight Megs And Constantly Swapping" back when Eight Megs was a lot of memory. "Eighty Megs" worked for a while after that. These days you'd have to rename it EGACS to use that joke.
- dstorrs 14y agoActually, it stood for "Editing MACroS" [1]. There are other expansions though -- see [2] below. [1] http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs-faq.html#Origin-of-the-term-Emacs http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs-faq.html#Origin-of-t... [2] http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/gnuemacs.acro.exp.html http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/gnuemacs.acro.exp.html
- deltasquared 14y agoAlso there is the totally useless capslock key, it could be mapped to meta just fine ^_^ See point 1 on Steve Yeggies's list of things to consider with emacs. https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/effective-emacs https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/effective-emacs