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

[Robert Thorpe]

Gregory Heytings <gregory@heytings.org> writes:

>>
>> I'm not sure that the number of published packages necessarily means 
>> that 1. user install more packages over time 2. some fixed proportion of 
>> these require global bindings. More often than not, packages might just 
>> provide hooks or implement interfaces like Xref or CAPF, thus avoiding 
>> their own special keys.
>>
>
> Frankly, I don't understand why it is necessary to argue so much to 
> explain that a limit of 26 or 52 global bindings is not enough.  It's as 
> if your operating system forced you to have at most 26 or 52 files or 
> folders in each folder; of course it would be feasible to use such an 
> operating system, but it would be terribly impractical.  I see that, out 
> of the ~11K commands in Emacs core, there are currently ~450-500 commands 
> bound to keys in global-map (counting only the C-something, M-something 
> and C-M-something).  I or you may, today, not need more than 26 or 52 
> global bindings for external packages, we may perhaps only need 10 or 20, 
> but this discussion isn't about me or you, or about the current situation, 
> it's about finding a long-term solution to a problem, with the hope that 
> in the long term more and more external packages will be useful to a large 
> audience.  It's about making Emacs friendlier for beginners, and also for 
> third-party library developers by giving them a "home" in Emacs' default 
> keyboard bindings.

I'm not sure I understand your point here.  Any single key that's picked
will have a similar limitation.

For example, let's suppose that M-o is picked.  That's my favourite, I
know you don't like it.  In that case any key can follow it.  That gives
the entire keyboard, maybe 100 keys.  Is that so different to 52?

Also, nested prefix keys can be used.  For example suppose that Magit
uses C-c g as a prefix.  It can then be followed by any keyboard
character.

However, I agree with you that adding things to the users space in the
C-c prefix is not ideal.  Adding another prefix key for 3rd-parties
would be better.  Assuming, of-course, that Drew Adam's proposal of a
moratorium is off-the-table.

BR,
Robert Thorpe