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by cmckay 4894 days ago
Although most keyboards nowadays use Alt for Meta, they were distinct keys on some older keyboards. I personally never used an MIT Lisp machine, but I have used Sun keyboards with a Meta key.

It's also fun to note that EMACS is an acronym for Escape Meta Alt Control Shift, which generally describes the experience of using it.
2 comments
Ogre 4894 days ago
As joke acronyms go, I preferred "Eight Megs And Constantly Swapping" back when Eight Megs was a lot of memory. "Eighty Megs" worked for a while after that. These days you'd have to rename it EGACS to use that joke.
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dstorrs 4894 days ago
Actually, it stood for "Editing MACroS" [1]. There are other expansions though -- see [2] below.

[1] http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs-faq.html#Origin-of-t...

[2] http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/gnuemacs.acro.exp.html

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