Re: Will default key bindings spell the death of Emacs?

[David.Kastrup@t-online.de (David Kastrup)]

Lars Hansen <larsh@math.ku.dk> writes:

> Andreas Schwab wrote:
> >
> >You might be surprised how many GUIs support Emacs keybindings like
> >C-k.
>
> I never intended to discuss which keybindings people should use.  On
> the contrary I think people should have the oppotunity to decide for
> themselves.

They don't have the opportunity if you don't have
a) an easy way to configure keybindings manually
b) an easy way to carry your keybindings around on a floppy, web site
or USB stick.

Just copying .emacs will not cut it, really, since that tends to
contain machine-specific stuff as well.

If you will lose your personal keybindings the moment you go to a
different machine, there is not much point in customizing to your
convenience.

Should keybindings be themeable?  Well, quite a few of people complain
about changed bindings and other stuff on upgrades.  But it would
probably be impractical to cater for them too much by providing Emacs
with a set of more historical keybindings.

But maybe more radical keybinding redesigns that are optional might
be possible.  I don't know enough of, say, viper-mode, to know
whether such experiments are bound to work well.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum