Re: Moving kbd to subr.el

[Gregory Heytings]

> > The old string syntax for keys just sucks and we should work towards 
> > its reduction, even if it will stay with us for the foreseeable future.
>
> I totally agree that the old string syntax for keys sucks, but there is 
> no realistic way to phase it out.  `kbd' was a nice attempt, but it's 
> not attractive enough as is.  My hope is that the new syntax (which 
> gives you actual error messages if you do something wrong and stuff) 
> will spur conversion.

I'm puzzled.  There is a way to phase it out, in fact this was one of the 
(two) explict goals of my proposal, and it was also the reason why you 
rejected it.  What am I misunderstanding?

This thread is rather long, so for those who did not read all its posts, 
this is what my proposal is:

Emacs 29: allow both syntaxes (kbd and old) in strings; these syntaxes are 
different and can be distinguised programmatically (with very few 
exceptions, namely someone who would use e.g. "C-o" to mean "C - o" or "a 
b" to mean "a SPC b").

Emacs 29 + N: allow both syntaxes (kbd and old), but display a warning 
when the old syntax is used (mentioning what the new syntax should be), 
and possibly (if for some reason the old syntax is necessary in some 
cases) introduce a new specific syntax for it (e.g. "{\C-ca}").

Emacs 29 + 2*N: allow only the kbd syntax, display an error otherwise.

Sure, this could break some configurations and some old code, but not more 
than when the cl- prefix was added to the cl-lib library, or to take a 
more recent (current) example when xref switched from eieio to 
cl-defstruct.  And unlike these examples the fix is in each case as simple 
as possible.