RE: Request for pointers and advice: displaying several buffers inside a single window

[Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com>]

>> You don't need to memorize anything.  And certainly
>> not in order to be able to use the feature.  The
>> predefined keys are just for convenience.
> 
>> And you can bind any of the commands to whatever
>> keys you like.
> 
> I think we are miscommunicating.  All Emacs key bindings are "just for
> convenience" and each user can rebind them.  Notwithstanding that, it
> is important for default bindings to be convenient.  C-x n M-= v is
> not going to be easy to remember.  If a command is worth giving a key
> binding to, can someone propose a more convenient default binding?

I'm the one who decided that the commands are worth
giving key bindings to.  I believe it's convenient
enough to put all zone keys on `narrow-map', and I
believe it's convenient enough to put all toggle
commands for zones on their own keymap, and to put
that on `narrow-map'.

Putting the toggle keys on their own map makes it
easy for someone to move them, together, to another
prefix key.

Putting all zone keys on an _existing_ prefix key
means saving another prefix key for some other use.
`narrow-map' makes sense for that, because it's
about multiple different buffer areas: ~zones.

Where we may be miscommunicating is perhaps that
it's up to me to decide which keys I think best to
predefine for zones.el and isearch-prop.el.

I'm quite open to user feedback, including about
predefined key bindings.  But I'm not convinced by
the argument that `C-x n M-=' shouldn't be used as
a default prefix key because it's not convenient.

My priorities here are not just for quick keys or
individually memorable keys.  I expect users to
pick their own keys for that, if they like, based
on their use.

My priorities for this are instead:

1. Group all zone keys on a prefix key.
2. Don't waste a new prefix key - use existing key.
2. Use `C-x n', because:
   (a) it's relevant - logical association between
       zones and buffer restrictions
   (b) it doesn't already have many keys on it
3. Group the toggle keys on their own prefix key
   (which is on `C-x n').

#2 and #3 do help memory, but for key _groups_,
not for individual keys.

For individual toggle keys there are also mnemonics:

`v', `V' for visibility toggles
`~' ("not") for complementing the domain
`d' for dimming

Similarly for the other zone keys, these mnemonics:

`#' for selecting zones by ID number
`a', `A' for adding zones
`c', `C' for cloning zones
`C-d' for deleting zones from the current zones set
`D' for deleting text-dimming
`h', `H' for highlighting zones
`l', `L' for adding/setting zones from (high)lighting
`P' for property-putting on zones
`r', `R' for adding/setting zones from regexp matches
`s' for selecting zones as the region
`u' for uniting (coalescing) zones
`v' for changing the current zones variable

And these, which follow the usual search keys:

`C-s', `C-M-s', `C-r', `C-M-r' for search
`M-%', `C-M-%' for query-replace

The one key that's not really mnemonic, but which
gets used a lot, is `x', which cycles among
narrowings (`C-x n x x x...).

I would have picked `n' for that, which _is_
mnemonic, but that's already `narrow-to-region' (not
especially mnemonic within the set of narrowing
keys, but it was perhaps the first such).

I picked `D' for dimming because `d' was already
`narrow-to-defun'.

I picked `P' for property-putting because `p' was
already `narrow-to-page'.