Re: Suggested experimental test

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2021 14:15:12 +0000
> From: Gregory Heytings <gregory@heytings.org>
> cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> > Opening an empty line is a very useful editing primitive, not unlike 
> > going to the next line with RET.
> 
> I'd bet it is useful, as it is, only for 0.5% of Emacs users, perhaps even 
> less.  No other editor I know has that feature.

There's lot of good and useful stuff in Emacs that is not known to
"the crowd".  The right way of dealing with that is popularize it, not
delete it or make it harder or less convenient to use.  IMO, at least,
FWIW.

> And I'd bet that 90% of those 0.5% would be happier with a better
> open-line primitive, for example one which can be called when point
> is in the middle of a line, like "o" and "O" in vi.

You are welcome to add such a command, or find a clever way of
tweaking C-o to do that.  Then let's meet in, like, 20 years and see
how many percents of Emacs users like it or even know about it.

> The discussion showed that those who use it use it at BOL, 
> and that it wasn't used alone, but as part of a sequence, for example C-a 
> C-o or C-o C-n.  Nobody even mentioned the fact that open-line uses the 
> fill-prefix and the left-margin.

The discussion revealed more than that, but if you believe only 0.5%
find this command useful, how is that relevant?  If anything, it
reinforces my point above.

> And even assuming that it is useful as it is, that doesn't answer the main 
> question: why should a control character key be reserved forever for that 
> very specific purpose, and for that very specific purpose only?

I did try to answer that.

> > Trying to change that will always cause staunch resistance, especially 
> > when the purpose for which this is done is vague and not perceived as 
> > important enough by enough people.
> >
> 
> I could have clarified the purpose indeed, but the risk would have been to 
> start two parallel discussions.

Oh, I think I understand the reason.  It wasn't my mood that I was
describing, and you already know what I think about disputes about the
default key bindings.