Re: PROPOSAL: Repurpose one key (why only one?) and reserve it for third-party packages

[Gregory Heytings <gregory@heytings.org>]

>>> I'm not sure I understand your point here.  Any single key that's 
>>> picked will have a similar limitation.
>>
>> With a single key you indeed have a limitation, but it's the limitation 
>> of the keyboard, not an arbirary one.  You have full access to all 
>> letters, all digits, all symbols, combined or not with the control 
>> and/or meta modifier.  That's a lot more than 26 or 52 keys.
>
> I see what you mean but I don't think it's a huge difference.  Most 
> desktop keyboards have ~104 keys.  And some of those can't be 
> differentiated from each other by Emacs.  Laptop keyboards usually have 
> fewer, mine has 81.
>

Indeed, and when you combine these with the control and/or meta and/or 
shift modifier you have ~400 possible keys.  Which means that with two 
prefix keys you have ~800 possible keys.

The main point is that third-party packages are first-class citizens and 
should get all possible keys, not an arbitrary subset.

>>> For example, let's suppose that M-o is picked.  That's my favourite, I 
>>> know you don't like it.
>>
>> It's in the proposal, it would be a perfect choice, together with C-o.
>
> I think C-o is a terrible idea.  Open-line is a very useful command.
>

The proposal explicitly mentions that open-line would remain bound to C-o 
C-o.  That's three key presses instead of two.  And if you think that 
open-line is so important in your workflow that pressing three keys 
instead of two is really not possible, you can of course always bind 
open-line to C-o in your init file, and move the third-party library 
keymap that would be on C-o somewhere else.