Heya,
  I've started using beancount.el to do my Beancount editing. It has
great features --- for which I'm super grateful :-)) --- but I couldn't
help a feeling that the mode got in my way, clashing with almost all my
personal mode-independent Emacs keybindings.

In the beginning I thought this was just a coincidence, and that I was
very unlucky, but I recently realized it is not. beancount.el seems to
consistently use lot of "C-c <letter>" keybindings, which are supposed
to be reserved for users and should not be used by Emacs modes or Lisp
programs. Here's a quote from Emacs documentation about key binding
conventions[^]:

> Don't define C-c letter as a key in Lisp programs. Sequences consisting
> of C-c and a letter (either upper or lower case) are reserved for users;
> they are the only sequences reserved for users, so do not block them.
>
> Changing all the Emacs major modes to respect this convention was a
> lot of work; abandoning this convention would make that work go to
> waste, and inconvenience users. Please comply with it.

[^]: 
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Key-Binding-Conventions.html

According to the same document either C-c followed by punctuation /
symbols (if beancount.el is to remain a minor mode) or C-c followed by
control characters / digits (if it is to graduate to a major mode) would
be more appropriate.

Martin: any chance we could convince you to adopt these conventions for
the default keybindings of beancount.el? If yes, I'd be happy to file a
proposal as a patch in the issue tracker. But at the time I guess that
if the keybindings are to be changed to something else, you would want
to pick it yourself what that something else is.

With many thanks in advance for considering,
Cheers.
-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli . [email protected] . upsilon.cc/zack . . o . . . o . o
Computer Science Professor . CTO Software Heritage . . . . . o . . . o o
Former Debian Project Leader . OSI Board Director  . . . o o o . . . o .
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Beancount" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/20161109113351.ud2cyywyl5zd6bgi%40upsilon.cc.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Reply via email to