Re: not good proposal: "C-z <letter>" reserved for users

[Howard Melman <hmelman@gmail.com>]

Gregory Heytings <gregory@heytings.org> writes:

>> Could we someday stop considering Emacs a "terminal application"?
>> Yes, it has a version that works in the terminal, but it's limited
>> in features compared to the graphical one.
>
> According to the recent survey, 30% of the Emacs users use it in a
> terminal or console.  It is true that the non-graphical version has
> some limits, which are limits that are imposed by terminals and
> consoles, but the fact that it is possible to use the same program in
> both situations is, IMO, invaluable.

I'm not a terminal user and I suspect this is changing
something too longstanding to be considered but the subject
is "not good proposal" so ...

Leverage the fact that suspend is basically only useful in
the terminal and the frame commands are only useful in the
GUI and put them both on C-z.  In the terminal it's suspend
and in the GUI move (and rename via an alias) the
ctl-x-5-map to C-z.

This means in the GUI C-z is a frame command prefix and it
has nice symmetry with many commands on C-x right next to
it; C-z 2, C-z 1, C-z 0, C-z o, C-z b, C-z m, etc.  I'd also
add to the map commands like find-file-other-frame on C-f,
kill-buffer-and-frame on C-k, and of course suspend-frame on
C-z C-z.  As I said previously, I've been doing this for
years and like it a lot.

This then frees up C-x 5 as a prefix key.  It's probably a
year too late (though this muscle memory can't be too strong
yet), but I'd move the C-x t tab-bar commands to C-x 5 and
free up the more convenient C-x t prefix for something else.
It's not as convenient as an unbound C-z but it's something.
And it also solves the wasted C-x 5 prefix in a terminal
which no one seems to care about :)

-- 

Howard