Re: [CVS] f7, f8 bound..

[Per Abrahamsen <abraham@dina.kvl.dk>]

Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org> writes:

> On Tue, Sep 03, 2002 at 12:55:03PM +0200, Per Abrahamsen wrote:
>> The same solution can be used for all other maps, have a "for
>> customize only" keymap used by the mode that has the "for Lisp only"
>> keymap as a parent.
>> 
>> I think such a seperation between Lisp and Customize will be both
>> simpler and more robust, as the two will never interfere with each
>> other.
>
> It sounds more confusing for the user to have two variables which are `the
> same but different' like that.

The user will only see one of them, in this case either "global-map"
if he is a Lisp user, or "Global Key Bindings" if he is a Customize
user. 

If he is both, he really need two different variables, as mixing them
otherwise gives problems, like if you both setq a variable in .emacs
and set it from customize.  With seperate keymaps, he really can do
both, and get a well-defined result.

The only one we risk confusing is the programmer, not the user.  The
programmer will need to understand all three, the variable for
customization, the automatically generated custom keymap, and the
normal keymap.

> I think we should be trying to make customize _more_ of a thin UI
> layer on top of existing mechanisms, not less.

That is a good idea if we believe that the difference between
the customization needs of a programmer and a non-programmer is merely
a matter of syntactic sugar.  

I am more interested in moving the other direction, and focus on
simplicity for the non-programmer, and generality for the programmer.
Emacs is _still_ not really customizable for non-programmers.

And I disagree with the Naggum "the goal of Emacs is to turn people
into Lisp programmers" line.  I don't want Emacs to turn users into
programmers, anymore than I want my car to turn me into an auto
mechanic.

> I think Stefan's exactly right that the _right_ thing to do is something
> roughly equivalent to `defcustom global-map'.

Something like 

  (defkeymap my-mode-map ...)

generating all three for major and minor modes.