🚀 go-pugleaf

etxjojm@ericad.ericsson.se (Jonas Jaernestroem TG/HDK) writes:

< >>  I have a simple suggestion.  Create a new prefix character.  It would
< >>  certainly be unreasonable to take C-a and make it a prefix character.
< >>  (It's bad enough that backspace on some terminals is a help key.)
< >>  C-z is bound to suspend-emacs for historical reasons.  I suggest defining:
< >>
< >>	 C-c	mode prefix character -- these commands depend on the
< >>		 mode of the current buffer
< >>	 C-z	user prefix character -- reserved for user

< I think Bruce lebans proposal is a good one, to reserve a special prefix
< character for end user, rather than "stealing" half of the keymap from
< the current major mode.

Bleck yuck loose loose.  I stole C-Z for scroll-one-line-up, and M-Z
for one-line-down (inspired by gosmacs), and made C-X C-Z be suspend,
to be isomorphic to C-X C-C.  Defining C-C to be a user-extensable key
MAP this late in the game would be almost, but not quite, as bad as
using Backspace for a help key.

One of the great things about Emacs is that you can reprogram the keys
to suit yourself.  This is also one of the great problems with Emacs.
As it is, if I sit down at someone else's vi, I know how it works, but
the same is not true of Emacs -- they may have remaped ^V to be ^A
(quoting from a different article) or some other fool thing.

One very important thing that was sort of glossed over was the concept
of making control keys case-sensitive.  THIS WOULD BE A *REALLY* DUMB
THING TO DO.  Not everyone runs Emacs under X, and a fair number of
people run on a 7-bit ASCII channel, through which they may not be
able to type all 33 control characters.  If you want to write a whole
new editor, and call it something else, fine, but if you want to call
it Emacs, don't screw it up for people running on less-than-optimal
equipment.  (I'm willing to bet that there are at least as many
non-programmer "users" of GNU Emacs as there are hacker types.  Try to
explain to your secretary why the new version of Emacs "doesn't
work".)

It may also be that if you are filling up the C-C map with extra
stuff, your major mode may be way too complex.  Maybe not, but
possible.

In any case, it's about 15 years too late to go and do radical things
with the Emacs key bindings.  It's about 5 years to late to do liberal
things with the bindings.  In this, be conservative.

			--P