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From: george@GVAX.CS.CORNELL.EDU (George R. Boyce)
Newsgroups: mod.computers.vax
Subject: Re: XON XOFF and EMACS
Message-ID: <8603131555.AA21896@gvax.cs.cornell.edu>
Date: Thu, 13-Mar-86 10:55:23 EST
Article-I.D.: gvax.8603131555.AA21896
Posted: Thu Mar 13 10:55:23 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 15-Mar-86 21:29:52 EST
References: <[MC.LCS.MIT.EDU].847605.860311.KFL>
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Reply-To: gvax!george (George R. Boyce)
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept, Ithaca NY
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KFL@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU ("Keith F. Lynch") writes:
> [discussion of how really painful it would be to have to quote ^s/^q
> with a ^p prefix character]

Many versions of emacs allow one to remap keys on input and all emacs
versions allow one to remap commands on keys. Thus you can either get
use to the idea that ^] sends (in the eye of emacs) a ^s or you can
get use to the idea that ^] *is* the search command. In the latter case
you still need a way of inserting a real ^s/^q and that is done by
adding a command the inserts a control character on request. Gnuemacs
has the first ability and it is real nice since you don't have to 
quote characters nearly as much, if at all (vs. your ^P^S... example :-).

^] above is just an arbitrary character which I happened to choose along
with ^\ for ^q. The author(s) of (gnu)emacs have finally gave their
blessing (?) to replacement characters for ^s/^q, they picked ^^ and ^\ but
I found ^^ hard to type on most DEC terminals (another can of worms).
(They don't like the idea any more than the rest of us that xon/xoff
exists. They just said IF you must, perhaps standardize on ^^/^\ as
replacements.)

Of course, this does nothing at all to "fix" other programs that use ^s/^q.
>
>    I agree, however, that XON XOFF is too widely used to 
>    ignore it or to change it now ...
>
>  EMACS is too widely used to ignore it or to change it now!
>
>								...Keith
Sorry, programs change every day of the week. That is the whole idea
of software! In specific, look at what the gnu project has done with
gnuemacs. 


George Boyce, Cornell Computer Services