Re: Invoking Magit

[Stefan Monnier]

>  * `C-c LETTER' is for users to do with as they like -- neither   Emacs
>    nor third-party packages should ever bind anything here.
>
>  * `C-c C-LETTER' and `C-c DIGIT' and `C-c {}<>:;' are all   reserved for
>    major modes.  In this case it doesn't matter whether the mode     ships
>    with GNU Emacs or is a 3rd-party mode, since only one     major mode is
>    active at a given time.  If a user has chosen     the mode, then they
>    accept that part of the keybinding space     (sure, they might customize
>    it further, but that's up to them     -- they understand that they may
>    overwrite default bindings of     the mode when they do that).
>
>  * `C-c OTHER_STUFF' is for minor modes; I'll skip the details   here.

Those are for use *within* the major/minor mode.
The keybinding under discussion is a global one to make it easier to
enter Magit.  It doesn't have much choice but to collide
with something :-(

But sometimes the better answer is not to use a keybinding at all.

>> I think it'd make more sense to use a keybinding under the `C-x v` prefix.
> ...I couldn't tell whether you meant it would make more sense for *users* to
>  do that (i.e., by their choice), or for *Emacs* to do that (i.e., we
> reserve that slot for Magit).

Neither/both.  I meant for Magit to do that.

>> Another option would be to hijack `find-file` like PCL-CVS did, i.e. make
>> it so `C-x C-f .../.git` opens up Magit. 
> (Oh my gosh, it's been *years* since I used PCL-CVS... you are bringing back
> memories... :-) )
> I hope we wouldn't do that here.  There are many reasons why someone might
> open up a .git directory in Dired Mode (I do it all the time) by doing `C-x
> C-f .../.git'.

I've never been super happy with that trick in PCL-CVS either, but in
practice it worked great, IME.  Of course, you sometimes do want to look
at the CVS/.git/younameit dir or file, but that's what the C-u prefix
was for.

I do feel that Emacs would gain by developing some way to specify
interactively *how* a given file should be viewed.  In most cases
there's only one reasonable choice, admittedly, but I find more and more
cases where this is not so (e.g. ps-as-image vs ps-as-text,
djvu-with-djvu-mode vs djvu-with-doc-view, odt-with-doc-view vs
odt-as-zip-archive, html-as-text vs html-via-shr, ...).


        Stefan