Followup to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
By author: Markus Kuhn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
In newsgroup: linux.utf8
>
> When X11 was originally designed, MIT had bought a couple of then very
> fashionable "Symbolics LISP machines", which had level 2, 3, 4 shift
> keys called meta, super, hyper. That's where these key names come from.
> Richard Stallman also had one of these, hence the use of a "Meta" key in
> Emacs (with an ESC fallback for VT100 terminals).
>
> All this is horribly obsolete today, because Symbolics LISP machines do
> not exist any more and practically every X11 user uses the standard PC
> keyboard with keys labelled Alt, AltGr, Compose, etc. The X11 meta key
> nomenclatura urgently needs a little facelift, IMHO, but since the
> entire original X11 project team has left the X Consortium (now called
> X.Org with all new people), the maintenance of the X11 standards has
> stalled.
>
Personally I really like Super and Hyper on the keyboard. I use Emacs
and bind keystrokes that I use frequently but are bound to clever
things such as Ctrl-X 4 s by default.
The existing keysyms are basically useless, since you can't use them
(other than "in documentation") without M$ suing you(!!) so you have
to call them something... Super and Hyper is as good as anything.
-hpa
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"Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot."
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