Funny symbols/strings

[KMP at MIT-MC (Kent M. Pitman)]

What would people think of having #\\RETURN, #\\LINEFEED, etc. turn into
the char designated... or can someone suggest a better way to get the effect
of #.(ASCII #\RETURN) which is what I am resorting to now? There doesn't seem
to me any reason that the alist which #\ uses can't include entries like
(... (RETURN . #.(ASCII 13.)) (LINEFEED . #.(ASCII 10.)) ...). Yes, I am
interested in this returning a symbol I can PUTPROP to -- even on machines
that have character objects available. I realize that there may be some 
discussion on this point. Perhaps a different set of keys which would return
char objects if the Lisp had them and something else on the more primitive
Lisps. Comments?
-kmp

ps apologies in advance for duplications of this message