Best tagging practice: multi-key sequences?

[Paul W. Frields]

On Wed, 2005-11-23 at 19:30 -0600, Tommy Reynolds wrote:
> Uttered "Paul W. Frields" <stickster at 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/
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