Re: Proposal: new default bindings for winner and windmove

[Daniel Colascione]

On June 23, 2024 9:40:06 AM EDT, Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Daniel Colascione <dancol@dancol.org> writes:
>
>> So? Nobody is preventing those users doing what they want with their
>> key bindings.  You're making a general purpose argument against having
>> default key bindings at all. Why don't we just ship Emacs with an
>> empty global keymap so we're not imposing on anyone?
>
>Replace "having" with "introducing" and you should find that this line
>of argument is generally sound.  After all these years, all the commands
>that justify being bound by default have already received bindings in
>the default keymaps, and plenty of commands that are well in excess of
>this criterion.
>
>> Metrics with nontrivial opt-in suffer from selection bias. The sort of
>> person who goes out of his way to enable telemetry is the sort of
>> person who's going to do more customization than the average user.
>
>Yes.  That does not render mandatory collection of metrics any the less
>morally objectionable in a computer program, nor imposing arbitrary
>changes on users any more reasonable.
>
>> So? How does providing default windmove bindings make your life worse?
>
>I have bound C-x 4 <down> to ffap-other-window, C-x 4 i to
>ibuffer-other-window, and the remaining arrow keys to other commands
>that fall into the same -other-window scheme.  I trust there is a
>multitude of users besides Alan and myself with their own purposes for
>these keys.

I don't trust that many such users exist, and even if they did, providing 
default keybindings for these keys will not somehow override the keybindings 
you install yourself.


>
>> They're not convenient for anyone if left unbound. 
>
>Scarce are the keys that are not bound by default, and therefore may be
>customized by users without risking departures in their Emacs sessions
>from the expectations of users trained and pastured on uncustomized
>sessions.  This is just one, and by far not the most compelling, of many
>objections to introducing new default keybindings, but one of which a
>recent example comes to mind: C-x x u has for many years been bound in
>my sessions to a command that deletes a buffer's undo list, usually in
>the interests of security.  The consequences of a stranger's
>unsuspectingly typing the same to invoke rename-uniquely might easily
>have been catastrophic.
> 


This attitude is why Doom Emacs exists. A live software project is one that 
changes. A dead one prioritizes stasis over user experience.

Nothing we're talking about here will disturb your custom keybindings. Your 
experience will work just as it did before. The only difference is that users 
who don't have custom bindings for the arrow keys under C-x 4 will get windmove 
functionality if they don't customize the bindings.