Re: PROPOSAL: Repurpose one key and reserve it for third-party packages

[Gregory Heytings <gregory@heytings.org>]

>>> C-\ is used to set the input method.  But we could move that 
>>> functionality to C-^, and then give up C-\ to third party packages.
>>
>> Except that \ is hard to type on most keyboards: C and \ are the two 
>> most distant keys on the most widespread keyboard layout (QWERTY), and 
>> on other keyboards \ requires pressing Shift or AltGr.  Not exactly an 
>> appealing prefix.
>
> The same could be said for C-o or M-o. And if you care about non-QWERTY 
> layouts, C-z on a German QWERTZ keyboard isn't much better.
>

At least these are letters, which do not require pressing Shift or AltGr 
anywhere.  Nothing is perfect, it's a practical problem, and "o" and "z" 
are the only letters that have a non-zero chance to be repurposed.

>
> (Also I wonder, aren't Shift, Ctrl, and Alt keys meant to be used 
> crosswise, i.e., left key for the right half of the keyboard, and vice 
> versa? For example, how do you type C-b or C-t?)
>

That depends on your keyboard, not all keyboards have two Ctrl keys and 
two Meta/Alt keys.  I remapped Caps Lock to Ctrl, and have my left pinkie 
almost always resting on it.