Re: Key Mapping Proposal

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Noah Lavine writes:

 > However, it seems like my question and Teemu Likonen's reply show that
 > the functionality isn't well enough documented yet.

It is well documented I think, but in the Emacs-Lisp manual.

It's a matter of judgment (and mine doesn't really matter much on this
list :-), but IMHO it doesn't belong in the Emacs User manual.  Again
I commend to you the study of CUA mode, which has been endlessly
controversial (partly for reasons of free software advocacy, of
course, but also for technical reasons) exactly because trying to move
as few as four bindings forces changes throughout the keymap, and then
of course it encourages requests for more CUA compatibility, in mouse
gestures as well, etc.  IOW, any such change is equivalent in
difficulty to writing a simple major mode (and can be substantially
more difficult if you want to contribute it to the community, because
to get much uptake you need to compromise with others' "essential"
keybindings.

YMMV; I offer my opinion to give you an idea of what kind of contrary
opinion may be out there so you can deal with it in advance, not to
discourage you from trying.

 > I think a good solution would be an info node that explains this
 > mechanism which would be linked from the Customization->Key Bindings
 > node, with a list of the generic functions that are commonly the
 > target of keybindings,

Doing C-h b in *scratch* gives a pretty close approximation IMO.  Try
it and let us know.  Note that although the default global keymap is
one of the most stable features of the Emacs UI, it does change
occasionally.  Since Emacs is capable of generating it on the fly, I
think it's best to point to the functionality of C-h b rather than put
a table in the manual.

In addition, I would suggest a link to the node on keymaps in the
Emacs Lisp manual (which Emacs doesn't install by default, or maybe
that's just MacPorts, grr).

I think that what you'll find if you browse the help for help is that
most of the information you've mentioned is oly a few keystrokes away.
It would be useful to provide a summary of how to get the information
that you think is useful in the node in the Emacs User guide (although
I still think that the detailed information belongs in the Lisp
Reference).