Re: not good proposal: "C-z <letter>" reserved for users

[Robert Thorpe]

Gregory Heytings <gregory@heytings.org> writes:

> It would be part of the key binding conventions.  Of course nobody is 
> forced to follow these conventions, nobody is fined if the don't, but 
> AFAICS the vast majority of package developers do follow them.  Those who 
> dislike the core Emacs development team do care about their users, and 
> would not want to make their life more complicated than necessary.

I hope you're right.

> As has been explained again and again, including in the post to which you 
> are replying, "C-z C-z" would remain bound to "suspend-frame", all you'd 
> have to do is to press three keys instead of two.  That isn't "awful", 
> especially for a command you don't use once a minute.  And in case you 
> personally really need "suspend-frame" on "C-z", you would of course 
> always have the possibility to (global-set-key (kbd "C-z") 
> 'suspend-frame), and to move the keymap(s) reserved for third-party 
> libraries on some other key of your choice.

I agree with Jean Louis on that too.  I think C-z C-z is not good
enough.  Every other terminal application uses C-z by itself, it's a
convention.  It's been that way for decades.  If you write a terminal
application and do nothing special then C-z will suspend it.  That's
because it sends SIGTSTP.

Conventions make the whole operating system easier to use.

In your other replies you talk about casual users of Emacs.  What about
casual users who also use the shell?  One of my friends is like that -
he uses the shell for everything.  But he uses Emacs for editing.  That
workflow means suspending Emacs very often.  To users like that you are
breaking a very old and well established expectation.

>> Of the keys suggested I think the best is "M-o" since it's current 
>> default binding isn't very useful.
>>
>
> A meta key alone wouldn't be an appealing solution for third-party 
> developers, it must either a control key alone, or a control key and its 
> corresponding meta key.

I don't see why.  What wrong with just a meta key?  On modern keyboards
the Alt and Ctrl keys are usually the same size.

BR,
Robert Thorpe