Greek keybindings in keymap-global.rkt are not intuitive

[maueroats]

Investigated using DrRacket 8.4, disable keybindings from menus, then show keyboard shortcuts.

The keybindings for Greek characters in keymap-global.rkt are generated programmatically. This has resulted in keybindings that do not make sense (see list below).

My guess: this feature is never used. Mark for removal?

Under the suggested keybindings, I have marked with a ? bindings that I have taken from AUXTeX but feel less-than-confident of. In particular x being bound to Xi and not Chi is surprising to me.

Character	Suggested binding	Current binding
gamma	g	c
zeta	z	f
eta	h	g
theta	?! j	h
xi	?? x	o
omicron	o	p
pi	p	q
sigma	s	t
tau	t	u
upsilon	u	v
phi	f	w
chi	?? q	x
psi	y	y
omega	? w	z

Screen capture from AUCTeX reference card should give support to the idea that these are "correct" bindings.

[rfindler]

I wonder if Greek keyboard layouts might suggest a reasonable mapping. If there is a standard one, then matching that might be the way to go? That is, I see that the place where an "a" is on my american keyboard is an "α" on at least one picture of a keyboard I found via google, which gives more weight to that part of the mapping.

[maueroats]

Thanks for the reply and please pardon the tone of the next paragraph (at least).

This sounds like yak shaving for an unused feature. (It can't have many users since "p" doesn't produce "pi" right now and M-x C-g d does not seem easier to type than \delta M-\.)

To me, auctex is a perfectly reasonable reference for "keybindings for typing greek in a mathematical setting". Not intending an insult, but in case you're not familiar with it - this is a Emacs package in development for decades that is used for writing math in TeX. Maybe not CS? (Of course auctex users aren't the audience here, so this argument isn't particularly strong.)

The Greek keyboard layout isn't a bad choice, anything would be better than the current bindings, but I don't see a particular reason to consider it better - it's presumably designed for typing Greek words.

I'm submitting a PR for the AUCTeX bindings anyway.

If somebody wants to change the bindings, it's just altering the letters.

For reference, these are the differences Greek keyboard vs the bindings I am submitting:

y = upsilon (ypsilon)
u = theta
j = xi
v = omega
c = psi
x = chi

[rfindler]

Thanks for your time and effort on this and I look forward to your pull request.