Re: Keymap initialization

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Stefan.

On Mon, Jun 26, 2017 at 13:41:50 -0400, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> >> This is anti-idiomatic: Emacs's own code has been making the
> >> opposite change over the years in most/all bundled packages.
> > I got sick and tired of having to do M-: (makunbound 'foo-map) before
> > loading files with changed keymaps.  As a developer yourself, you should
> > welcome such changes.

> C-M-x on the (defvar foo-map ...) takes care of it as well.  Or using
> `defconst` instead of `defvar` would do the trick also (although that's
> also less idiomatic).  Or write a new M-x reload-file which causes all
> the defvars to be re-evaluated.

Workarounds, every one.

> >> I consider indispensable, but I really don't see why CC-mode's keymaps
> >> need to behave differently from all other major modes.
> > They don't.

> Obviously they do, which is why you made the change.

> > Precisely how these keymaps are constructed and loaded is of
> > lesser importance.

> It seems important enough for you to change from the idiomatic form to
> a non-idiomatic one.

<sigh>.  It's of near zero importance to the Emacs team, it's of quite
some importance to the hacker who's currently changing the key maps.

> But yes, I do think it's of lesser importance, which is why I think it's
> more important that the downsides (e.g. the need to C-M-x or (makunbound
> 'foo-map), or the need to re-run your .emacs after reloading cc-mode.el,
> ...) be standardized.

Why do you think things should be standardised?  (Not a rhetorical
question)

> IOW, rather than make CC-mode yet-a-bit-more different from the rest of
> Emacs, I wish you would try to find a way to solve your problem globally.
> If this annoyance affects you, there's a good chance it affects many
> other developers, so finding a general solution would be a lot better.

That seems to presume that the way things are already done in Emacs is
at or near some optimum, and deviating from that way is therefore
sub-optimal.  I don't think there's any evidence for this.  I see some
"standard" ways of doing things in Emacs which I don't think are good.
People should feel free to try out various ways of doing things.  Only
this way can new ideas come forth, leading to a gradual improvement in
Emacs when these ideas spread.

Setting key map entries at load time could be a general solution to that
particular annoyance.  People, having seen it in CC Mode, will be able
to adapt it for their own modes, should they see fit.

>         Stefan

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).