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From: jr@LF-SERVER-2.BBN.COM (John Robinson)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: gnumacs bindings
Message-ID: <8709141417.AA23838@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Mon, 14-Sep-87 10:17:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8709141417.AA23838
Posted: Mon Sep 14 10:17:53 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 15-Sep-87 04:56:20 EDT
References: <14655@topaz.rutgers.edu>
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Reply-To: jr@ALEXANDER.BBN.COM
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Lines: 18

[Putting words into RMS' mouth:]

>>   I feel very strongly that help-command be bound to a mnemonic key
>>   sequence, so that it will be remembered.  This key sequence must be
>>   easy to type, so that it will be used as a first recourse.

The key used in ITS/Tops20 EMACS was control-underscore (C-_), which
is decidedly neither easy to type nor mnemonic.  In fact, on the
VT100, if you typed underscore, then typed the same thing with the
control key also depressed, you didn't get C-_ at all!  So the
introductory message that suggested what key to type for help had to
be changed depending on the terminal type!

As has been pointed out, RMS changed a few things in going from ITS to
GNU.  I'd say this one was an improvement.

/jr
jr@bbn.com or jr@bbn.uucp