Date: Fri, 21 Mar 1997 17:03:57 +1100
From: dbassin AT mail DOT usyd DOT edu DOT au (David Bassin)
Message-Id: <199703210603.RAA04172@extro.su.OZ.AU>
To: eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il
CC: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
In-reply-to: <Pine.SUN.3.91.970318142228.17465Q-100000@is> (message from Eli Zaretskii on Tue, 18 Mar 1997 14:23:00 +0300 (IDT))
Subject: Re: emacs and right alt key

Eli:

  Thanks very much for your response.  I have been too busy for the last
few days to respond.

  Obviously I did not search the emacs info files carefully enough; my
apologies.

   On reading the relevant section it seems I have a messy, partial elisp
`solution' by doing e.g.

    (setq dos-hyper-key 1)

and for single-key assignments doing e.g.

    (define-key WhateverMap [ ?\H-b ] [ ?\M-b ])

  This is so nasty that even if I had RTFM properly I would have ended up
asking whether there was an easier way to do this, which you've answered
already by saying that it will be in the next version.  When will this be?
If it's fairly soon, I may use the nasty elisp solution rather than
getting the patch from you and trying to rebuild emacs under DOS; I don't
have gcc for DOS installed anywhere.  On the other hand, I have built
emacs under Linux, which was relatively painless.

  Incidentally, I think that the addition of the right Alt and Ctrl keys
was the one thing IBM did right when it created the 101-key (or 102-key; I
can't remember) keyboard.  Being able to use the Alt and Ctrl keys with
the opposite hand from the one typing the ordinary key greatly improves
the ergonomics of the keyboard for someone who has been trained to do the
same when using the ordinary Shift key, as is standard in touch-typing
courses.  It's odd that IBM did this right, while making the keyboard less
ergonomic by moving many other keys further from the home keys.

  Thanks again,

  Shalom,

                              David.