On Wed, Jun 26, 2024, at 8:57 AM, Daniel Colascione wrote:

> >Thanks, but how should we do that without breaking
> >windmove-default-keybindings for those users who use it?
> 
> ... by not touching windmove-default-keybindings, except perhaps to mark it obsolete? Adding bindings to the default keymap does not interfere in any way with what windmove-default-keybindings does.

Y'all,

I'm the original author of windmove.el; apologies for weighing in late in the discussion.

The windmove functionality has been bound to shift-<arrow> or alt-<arrow> since the late '80s (in the BRIEF editor), and since the late '90s in Emacs, through `windmove-default-keybindings'.  Would deprecating these bindings and assigning entirely new ones be a net win?

In BRIEF, <f1> followed by <arrow> was another binding for selecting a window by direction, and <f2>, <f3>, and <f4> followed by <arrow> would resize, create, or delete a window by direction, respectively.  If we think that windmove functionality needs to be in the default keymap, perhaps these bindings could be replicated?  Then `windmove-default-keybindings' could become `windmove-enable-quick-keybindings' or similar.

(For reference, the BRIEF bindings are described on pages 84--89 of the BRIEF 3.1 user manual, available at http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/borland/BRIEF_for_DOS_and_OS2_Version_3.1_Users_Guide_1992.pdf)

-hs.