[plt-dev] Unicode is a pain

That does sound very nice. Esc is pretty heavily used in DrScheme
already, due to its attempt to copy emacs keybindings and using esc as
meta, but esc followed by another key might work to enter such a mode,
but it would probably also be nice to have just a single keystroke to
enter the mode.

In any case, I'd welcome a patch -- and one can even try it out
without modifying drscheme's source via the keybindings stuff. :)

Robby

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 2:43 PM, Jens Axel Søgaard
<jensaxel at soegaard.net> wrote:
> 2009/9/16 Robby Findler <robby at eecs.northwestern.edu>:
>> 2009/9/16 Anthony Cowley <acowley at seas.upenn.edu>:
>
>>> In Aquamacs, I just hit C-\ to toggle it, and then all the usual TeX
>>> macros work, with auto-completion.
>>
>> That's a bit different than DrScheme: in DrScheme, it isn't a mode;
>> you hit control-\ after typing a tex command. It would be good to have
>> a way to get autocompletion there, but I'm hesitant to add yet another
>> mode.
>
> This might be a bike shed discussion, but I much prefer the way
> Mathematica handles the entering of mathematical symbols to
> the DrScheme way.
>
> In Mathematica one must activates "symbol entering mode" before
> entering the character name. This is done via an easily found key stroke
> (as opposed to the more cumbersome C-\   BTW: On non-US keyboards
> \ is missing, so C-\ requires pressing three keys at the same time).
>
> Mathematica chose ESC as the key to enter char-inserting-mode.
> The carret changes visual appearence (to a verticl dotted line instead
> of a solid vertical line). Then one enters the character name, and
> finally one hits ESC again. It is works very nicely because ESC is
> easy to hit.
>
> Mathematica defines quite a few short cuts for the common characters
> such as  ESC a ESC for alpha, ESC => ESC for Leftrigtarrow etc.
>
> http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/tutorial/EnteringGreekLetters.html
> http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/tutorial/OtherMathematicalNotation.html
>
> I noticed the difference between the two mind sets when I recently wrote
> a program containing alpha, beta and gamma.
>
> --
> Jens Axel Søgaard
>