[no subject]

[David Chapman <ZVONA at MIT-AI>]

    Date: 20 December 1981 13:53-EST
    From: Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW>
    To:   ZVONA
    cc:   BUG-ZWEI

       Well, why can't whatever it is that translates 142 to <QUOTE> translate 839 to
        <C-M-G>?  That can't be very hard.  Then ~:c can be the same as ~c.
    142 is a character in the 8-bit charcter set; 839 is not.
Well, this is not a technical problem, because (tyo 839) prints <839>
and it is very clear that it could print <C-M-G> instead.  I take it
that your objection is that 839 is "not a printing character".  But
the issue is how to print such characters.  I think it is better to
print them unambigously as characters than to print some string of
other characters.
            It is also an important feature that the format used by
            FORMAT for printing be compatible with the format used by #\ for
            reading.  
        I don't understand how this is related.  That is the functionality of ~@c.
    #\c-m-J works too.  I think the symmetry is important.
I don't see that c-m-J is significantly more similar to #\c-m-J than
<C-M-J> (or <c-m-J>) is.

Perhaps I shouldn't labor this point, but the right thing seems clear
to me, and I don't really understand your objections.