On Wed, 2005-11-23 at 19:30 -0600, Tommy Reynolds wrote:
Uttered "Paul W. Frields" <stickster(a)gmail.com>,
spake thus:
> I'm not sure if I got Tommy's meaning right, but I think what he was
> getting at didn't have to do with the difference between printable and
> nonprintable characters, but rather the difference between something the
> user types and sees echoed on the screen (like ":wq" in the vi example),
> as opposed to Ctrl+Alt+Del.
Er, Paul, if you can see the echo: it's printable!
Ah, but in Emacs the special function keys *are* echoed to the screen.
Which, now that I think about it, makes the explanation below a better
fit with how I think the markup should go.
More formally, I would reserve keycaps, et. al., to mark-up
"function
keys": F1 and friends, as well as Ctl+Alt+Del, including the
you-would-never-type-this-character-in-typing-class category that
emacs loves so well.
Attend me. It matters not that VI treats ":wq" specially in some
instances. What is important is that it's a readable sequence. All
VI commands follow the general form of either
"<reps><action><destination>"
like "4cw" or a logical process like "wq". Massively
<keycap>'ing them
destroys the semantics. On the other hand, the emacs key binding of
"Ctl-C Ctl-F foo \n" is not readable and should be <keycap>'ed
because there are two logical "function" keys introducing the
sequence. If only emacs had the kind of keyboard it needed, there
would be a special function key whose labels was "Funky Emacs
Function".
I'll nobly resist rising to your baiting remarks, sir! ;-D
See the difference? A key or keys treated as a virtual function key
should be <keycap>'ed; anything else is just <userinput>. Reserve
the <keycap> family to convey the notion of a function key.
And it just so happens that most logical function key combos are
non-printing...
That any better?
I think you better said the thing that I meant, so yes!
--
Paul W. Frields, RHCE
http://paul.frields.org/
gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233 5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
Fedora Documentation Project:
http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/docs/