Re: Suggestion: Simple way to make conditional key bindings.

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

On Mon, Aug 26, 2002 at 11:47:50AM -0400, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > The point is that you can install a package - like table.el - which is
> > then able to install its own conditional binding on C-y *without*
> > interferring with (or even knowning) the standard binding.
> 
> I don't think that's right.  I don't believe that table wants to override
> C-y sometimes: instead it wants to override `yank' sometimes.
> So what you want to do is to create `yank-careful' and then use
> either the `remap' thingy or substitute-key-definition or something
> like that.

I agree strongly with this; I hate packages that rebind common key-bindings
with their own `equivalent' version -- naturally they fuck up totally if
you've changed the defualt binding, and even when not, such behavior often
seems very fragile.

Much better is some system like fill-paragraph uses where the generic binding
looks for `fill-parapgraph-function' to do the work, which modes can
override.  Of course such a mechanism only works for a limited set of
commands, where it's been established that they are useful to override, and
the variable etc. added -- but I think maybe this is a _good_ thing, not a
problem, and that we just ought to just make it slightly easier to define
such `semantic overrides'.

-Miles
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