Re: Suggested experimental test

[Gregory Heytings]

> > > > I don't use `C-o' myself, so I can't really say to what degree this 
> > > > would be annoying or not for users.  Any `C-o' users who have an 
> > > > opinion here?
> > >
> > > I use it _a_lot_.
> >
> > But of course, as you said a month ago:
> >
> > > This question also goes to everyone else in this long dispute who 
> > > wants their precious key bindings preserved: why is such a long 
> > > discussion needed when it is so easy to restore, in your init file, a 
> > > binding you want preserved?
>
> Sure.  But what I wrote then didn't prevent you-all from flooding this 
> list with precisely the discussions I tried to prevent.

I'm sorry for this, that's not what I wanted.  What would be the way to 
conduct such an experiment without provoking such a flooding, for those 
who do not have write access to the trunk?

IMO Emacs is now in a position that is similar to that of Emacs 16, when 
RMS introduced modes.  He realized that he needed a prefix key for them, 
and he did not choose to use one of the yet unused meta keys: instead he 
repurposed C-c and moved its command somewhere else.  The need for such a 
prefix key is something that he could not have envisioned while writing 
Emacs 1, it became apparent only later.  Likewise, some time later, when 
user configuration files became common, the C-c LETTER keys were freed. 
Again the need for this could not have been seen beforehand, and again RMS 
did not choose to use a free meta key for this.

Now the situation is that third-party packages are becoming more and more 
popular, something which couldn't have been envisioned twenty years ago, 
and these packages can't be installed in a simple way, that is, without 
asking users to fiddle with their configuration files, to define some 
global key bindings that these packages need.  I don't see why we 
shouldn't act in the same way RMS acted, that is, by repurposing one 
control key for them.