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


From: Gregory Heytings
Subject: Re: PROPOSAL: Repurpose one key (why only one?) and reserve it for third-party packages
Date: Sat, 20 Feb 2021 17:50:31 +0000


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

With a single key you indeed have a limitation, but it's the limitation of the keyboard, not an arbirary one. You have full access to all letters, all digits, all symbols, combined or not with the control and/or meta modifier. That's a lot more than 26 or 52 keys.

I see what you mean but I don't think it's a huge difference. Most desktop keyboards have ~104 keys. And some of those can't be differentiated from each other by Emacs. Laptop keyboards usually have fewer, mine has 81.


Indeed, and when you combine these with the control and/or meta and/or shift modifier you have ~400 possible keys. Which means that with two prefix keys you have ~800 possible keys.

The main point is that third-party packages are first-class citizens and should get all possible keys, not an arbitrary subset.

For example, let's suppose that M-o is picked. That's my favourite, I know you don't like it.

It's in the proposal, it would be a perfect choice, together with C-o.

I think C-o is a terrible idea.  Open-line is a very useful command.


The proposal explicitly mentions that open-line would remain bound to C-o C-o. That's three key presses instead of two. And if you think that open-line is so important in your workflow that pressing three keys instead of two is really not possible, you can of course always bind open-line to C-o in your init file, and move the third-party library keymap that would be on C-o somewhere else.



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