Re: bindings reserved for users

["Stefan Monnier" <monnier+gnu/emacs@RUM.cs.yale.edu>]

> > >  C-h i m emacs RET m keymaps RET
> ...
> > The experience until now is that
> > non-ASCII letters are never used
> > by major modes or minor modes,
> > so we [haven't needed] to decide
> > whether they should be reserved for the user or not.
> 
> Curious.  I can make sense of the RMS English this way,
> thank you ... except I see you didn't write exactly this.
> Where I write [] brackets, you actually wrote "we don't
> need" to decide?

I don't care about the distinction.  I think my point
was clear enough.

> What first drew my attention here was me failing to find
> any commonly available shifted key left reserved
> for the user by GNU Emacs.

That's because you misunderstood the doc.
`E' is a letter so C-c E is reserved for the user.
Or I misunderstand what you mean by "available shifted key".

> I think [ C-h i m emacs RET m keymaps RET ] tells me
> Emacs reserves for my use only the single keys
> F5 thru F9: no single key that I can hit without looking.

Indeed.

> If M-n M-o M-p are not candidates to be reserved for the
> user, how about the other single keys not bound by
> Emacs 20.7.1 by default i.e.
> C-` C-= C-; C-' C-, C-.

Feel free to use them (note that they most likely won't be available
(or only painfully which would defeat the purpose) in `emacs -nw').
But of course since they are not reserved for your use, you might
some day find that some mode uses them (for example X-Symbol uses C-=).
You can also use M-o which seems to be pretty much completely unused
(contrary to M-p and M-n which are very often used).
Many people use non-reserved key bindings all the time.


	Stefan