[OS X Emacs] Touch-bar?

[David Reitter]

Thanks.
The documentation does say that Esc “may” appear, so it is contextual like everything. We could have a real meta key modifier there, too, but I’ll have to see how usable it is (to press the touch bar key at the same time as a key that’s located lower, in the physical keyboard).  I haven’t received my MBP yet, so I’ll have to defer wrt what the interaction is going to feel like in practice.

- D



> On Nov 22, 2016, at 6:05 PM, Peter Frings <peter.frings at agfa.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi David,
> 
>> On 22 Nov 2016, at 16:17, David Reitter <david.reitter at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Juergen,
>> 
>> That’s a fair suggestion, but how are you going to like Emacs without a Meta key?
>> The Esc key is gone, as is Fn.  
>> Alt/Option is needed on pretty much all non-English keyboards that I know of for any programming work.  
> 
> 
> As far as I understand, the ESC key is normally still there in the left-most area of the touchbar. And even though the button looks like it is inset a little, the area that responds to touch extents all the way to the left (aligned with the real keys).
> 
> https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/AbouttheTouchBar.html
> 
> The Fn key is still there and make the usual F1, F2, etc. “keys” appear on the touchbar, including the ESC key (in case the application has replaced the ESC area by something else). You can also mark Emacs as an application which requires the Fn keys.
> 
> https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207240
> 
> The only difference with a normal keyboard would then be the feel of the keys. To be honest, the only keys in the Fn row I could reliably hit were those on the outer edges (mainly the ESC key); for all other Fn keys I had to look down.
> 
> Cheers,
> Peter.
>