Re: Suggested experimental test

[Yuri Khan]

On Thu, 25 Mar 2021 at 06:41, Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru> wrote:

> > we should have a bulletproof way to move things off
> > C-x and C-c.
>
> I think there are basically two directions:
>
> - Find two other C-<char> prefix key combinations to move the main
> prefix keymaps to. C-d and C-e come to mind (basically all other keys
> that are situated closer to Ctrl or Caps on a qwerty keyboard are all
> taken up by popular bindings such as C-a "select all" or C-s "save file").

What, being close to (left) Ctrl on a QWERTY is/was a consideration
when choosing C-x and C-c? This makes sense, as much as it does for
Undo/Cut/Copy/Paste.

> - Go all the way to VS Code/Atom/Notepad/etc approach and depopulate
> these prefix maps. And then use two modifiers at a time for the
> important commands/prefix maps which we still need to have bindings. For
> example, that would move 'C-x v' to 'C-M-g' and 'C-x C-i' to 'C-M-o', or
> similar.

In my personal bindings, I do prefer C-M-, C-S- and M-S- combinations
to sequences. (Also function keys and their C- and S- combinations.)

> Or maybe we could combine these both in some productive fashion.
>
> Not sure if that's the response you were looking for. Personally, I'm
> content with only using a small part of foreign conventions in my Emacs
> bindings and not looking to switch away. But if we're going to devise a
> proper solution for newcomer-friendly bindings, I don't think we should
> stop at just the four that cua-mode changes.

I’m way past the newcomer stage but I have not and am not going to
adopt Emacs as my desktop environment. And, for me, consistency across
the desktop is important. So I want C-x for cut and C-c for copy, and
I might like to move their traditional maps to any of C-[abdefimnop;']
or maybe <menu> (because my keyboard has working arrow keys and Home
and End at positions that do not require me to move my wrists so I
don’t get the traditionally quoted benefit from C-[fbnp]).

But, while I can (mostly) rebind something to ctl-x-map, in order to
move things off C-c, I’d have to basically copy every mode’s map into
my configuration and replace C-c with <menu>. Alternatively, I could
use some key translation mechanism to pretend <menu> produces C-c and
C-c produces <XF86Copy> or some such, but I’m not sure if that would
also affect sequences where C-c is not the first key (and I’d probably
like it not to).