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

[Gregory Heytings <gregory@heytings.org>]

>> No, with one control key you have all characters (not just letters, 
>> also digits and symbols), plus all C-something, plus all M-something, 
>> plus C-M-something.  With one control key and its corrsponding meta key 
>> you multiply that number by two.
>
> Ah ok, I get what you mean. Does it really make that much of a 
> difference? I'm not sure how many packages you are expecting would add 
> default bindings (or how conflict resolution should happen), but do you 
> really need more than 26?
>

That reminds me the famous "640 kb should be enough for anyone" ;-) 
Indeed, 26 letters is not enough.  Magit has three global commands, 
Org-mode has three, and Bookmark+ has three keymaps.  With just three 
packages you've already used 35% of the available keys.  I hope you 
understand that it can't be a long-term solution.  Moreover, AFAIU, 
packages cannot automatically bind their commands to C-c LETTER keys 
anyway: these keys are strictly reserved for users in their personal 
configuration files.

>>>> It's what most users expect.  apt install elpa-magit, C-x g, and 
>>>> voilà: Magit works.
>>>
>>> How do you come to this conclusion?
>>
>> It's what Magit (and other similar packages) do.  The presupposition of 
>> the proposal is that such packages know their users.
>
> I only know of Magit that does it, and as I have said before, I think it 
> is a mistake and unfriendly. But that still doesn't answer the question. 
> Why do you think that users expect it -- not the image that magit has it 
> it's users.
>

Being a programmer, I can understand your viewpoint.  As a user I can't. 
With M-x load-theme <something>, the user interface changes.  What makes 
keybindings so different from user interface colors that they should 
absolutely not be touched when a package is loaded, say with M-x 
global-foobar-mode, and require an explicit manual configuration by the 
user?  Do you also think it's a mistake and unfriendly if a package 
installs a menu item?  If not, what makes keybindings fundamentally 
different from menu items?