char-equal of control characters

["Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@CMU-CS-C.ARPA>]

        The next time we design a new Lisp, we should separate the concept of
        characters (which might or might not want to have fonts attached) and
        input-keystrokes, which would be some implementation-dependent
        representation of anything that might come in from keyboard land,
        including combinations of shift bits.  It was a mistake to muddle these
        two ideas together, but it is too late to change that now.

    I'm not sure I agree with that, since that is what we did in the Lisp machine
    world originally (before character objects) and it has been a continuing source
    of grief.

Well, the grief might be due directly to the separation of keystrokes
and characters, or it might be due to interaction with some other
problems in the way the Lisp Machine deals with characters.  We would
have to isolate the various issues involved before deciding.  In any
event, "the next time we design a new Lisp" will (for me) not be in my
current incarnation, and probably not the next one since I am scheduled
to come back as some sort of mollusc next time around, and few of them
design programming languages.  (Please, no puns about shell scripts...)

-- Scott