Re: Assignment of misc packages for emacs

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

    It seems to use _multiple_ keymaps (the MAPS and NMAPS parameters),
    which it merges to get all the menu entries.  Can any explain in what
    situation you end up with multiple keymaps that need to be merged like
    this?

If the same prefix has bindings in the local map and the global map
(and maybe in minor mode maps), those bindings are all keymaps,
and they ought to be merged.

	   Should the lisp function be passed a list of keymaps?

That would be ok, or you could merge them in the C code and pass
one combined keymap.

      1) something to iterate over the keymaps

	 E.g. perhaps (dobindings (VAR KEYMAP [PREDICATE]) BODY..)

That seems like a useful idea.  How about taking a look at what XEmacs
has and considering making this compatible?

      2) accessor functions of some sort for the tricky bits

That might be a good idea, but it also carries the risk of making a
simple thing very heavyweight.

	 I'm not sure what would be better though, a bunch of individual
	 accessor functions, e.g., (menu-item-help MENU-ITEM), or one big
	 accessor function like (menu-item-property MENU-ITEM :help).

Two functions, menu-item-property and menu-item-properties, would make
it easy to do the whole thing in a fairly lightweight way.  But it
really depends on comparing two complete proposals to see how heavy
each one is.