Re: PROPOSAL: Repurpose one key (why only one?) and reserve it for third-party packages

[Gregory Heytings]

> So I get that there might not be that many commands, but I'd dare to 
> claim that 52 keys are a fair number. This is not a matter of 
> computational power or memory, the needs are not increasing 
> exponentially over time.
>
> [...]
>
> Maybe it is just me, but it would surprise me if people would keep 52 
> distinct commands in memory, which all have to be bound globally and are 
> easy to type. Not insisting on this though.

On Elpa and Melpa there are currently 5121 distinct packages.  And there 
are lots of packages that are not on Elpa and/or Melpa.  That number can 
only grow over time, perhaps not exponentially, but grow nonetheless. 
Emacs itself has lots and lots of commands bound to keys, I don't know the 
exact number, but it's surely an order of magniture larger than 52. 
"Starter kits" such as Spacemacs include 100 or more external packages. 
Or course not all of them would have a reason to bind command globally, 
but some will bind more than one command.  So it seems to me that the 52 
keys limit is easy to reach.

I agree with Drew that the solution you propose is not user-friendly, 
because querying a user who doesn't yet know how a package works and what 
its commands are to bind some commands they do not yet know to a key is 
confusing.  What users would most likely do is to answer "yes" everywhere 
without thinking further.  (It reminds me what Windows program installers 
did when I started using computers, about 25 years ago.  They asked you a 
few questions, I don't remember precisely what they were, but it was 
something like "where do you want to install the program?", "do you want 
to put a shortcut on the desktop?", "do you want to put a shortcut in the 
start menu?".  You read those questions when you installed your first 
program, because you thought they were important, but later you just 
clicked "yes" to every question.)