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

[Gregory Heytings <gregory@heytings.org>]

Thanks for your detailed answer!

>
> Beginning from the fact, that I don't see any key that is common, unused 
> AND practical, I think we must accept that packages are actually limited 
> to those keys reserved for users (or user-configurations).
>

Well, that's exactly what the proposal attempts to fix ;-)

>
> Usually, packages like Magit, Org, elfeed, etc. can only informally 
> propose a key-binding to use, users have to read this and install it 
> themselves. Works for you and me, but can be confusing to others.
>

Yes, exactly.

>
> My suggestion is based on the introduction of two variables: One for 
> packages to formally specify their suggestions for what keys to bind, 
> what hooks to modify, what options to set, etc. and one for users to 
> declare if they are interested or not.
>
> The patch I added to a message proposed that eg. Magit wouldn't write 
> something like
>
>        ;;;###autoload
>        (global-set-key (kbd "C-x g") #'magit-status)
>
> (I'm oversimplifying, their code is more complex), but instead they add 
> a line like
>
>        ;;;###autoload
>        (add-to-list 'pacakge-configuration-suggestions
>                     '(magit            ; package name
>                       (key             ; what type of suggestion
>                        "C-x g"  ; what key to bind the following to
>                        magit-status ; what command to bind
>                       )))
>

I'm fine with this in principle, but it doesn't answer the question.  In 
the above example Magit would suggest "C-x g".  It can do this because at 
the moment that key isn't used by Emacs.  There is no guarantee that that 
key will not at some point be reclaimed by Emacs.  It cannot suggest a 
"C-c LETTER" key, these are AFAIU strictly reserved for users in their 
configuration files, and there are not enough available keys there so this 
cannot be a long term solution anyway.  So what keys can it suggest? 
This, and only this, is what the proposal is about.