why are M-( and M-) bound in esc-map?

why are M-( and M-) bound in esc-map?

[Drew Adams]

I was surprised to find by accident that M-( and M-) are bound in `esc-map',
which means they are in effect pretty much everywhere, including the minibuffer.

Is this a good idea? Shouldn't `insert-parentheses' and
`move-past-close-and-reindent' be bound only for programming modes for which
they actually make sense?  It can be surprising to get an error "Unbalanced
parentheses" 18, 5795" or some such if you accidentally hit M-) in the
minibuffer or a text file.

This seems like a bug to me, but it is apparently of long date.

Now, someone will surely reply that these can be useful in text mode too, for
parenthetical remarks. Maybe. Does anyone really write that way?

I'm thinking that a scan-error such as "Containing expression ends prematurely"
or "Unbalanced parentheses" will be more trouble to many users than this feature
is worth, except in programming buffers. This is the kind of thing that can
frighten users unnecessarily.