RE: address@hidden: bug in read-kbd-macro

[Drew Adams]

    > 1. The Emacs manual does not use the notation <next>; it uses
    > <NEXT>. Is this the right thing? The Lisp functions that provide key
    > descriptions produce <next>, not <NEXT>.
    
    The manual is written in English, not Lisp. Here's how it looks in the
    printed version (look ma, no angle brackets):    
    http://www.dd.chalmers.se/~bojohan/emacs/img/keys.png    
    (The Texinfo manual says that this notation refers to "a name for a
    key on a keyboard".)
    
1. It's useful to have the UI notation (everywhere) and the manual notation be 
the same, in general. It is a hindrance to have them different.

2. It's useful to have the same notation for both online and printed manual, in 
general.

3. It's useful to use the same notation convention for all key sequences. It 
misleads to write `a' and `]' one way and `prior' another way (<PRIOR>).

4. `prior' is much more readable than the kind of notation shown in your 
screenshot. Frankly, that looks like someone's first half-day playing with 
PowerPoint or Word, a hangover from font binging. After a few pages dense with 
key and key-sequence descriptions, that begins to nauseate. 

5. I pointed out additional inconsistencies.

6. <S-tab>, `S-<tab>', S-<tab>, `S-TAB', and S-TAB are _not_ names of keys on a 
keyboard. They are descriptions of key _sequences_.

7. CTRL, META, ALT, and so on, might be names of keys on many keyboards, but 
they are not names of key sequences. A different notation for these keyboard 
keys is OK. When used in the context of key sequences, the notation `C-' and 
`M-' is preferable (yes, the relation between META and `M-' is not obvious, and 
the same is true for CTRL and `C-').

8. This has nothing to do with Lisp vs English. We are talking about English 
communication here - in both UI and manual. I mentioned those Lisp functions 
because they are what a programmer uses to extend the UI (e.g. help, messages). 
So, it is that notation that users see in the UI as it is extended by user 
libraries. The point about Lisp is that the notation that programmers display 
to users should be the same as the notation shown to users elsewhere in the UI 
and in the manual.

[Again, I'm not proposing correcting this before the release.]