Re: Proposal: emulation-mode-map-alist

[Richard Stallman]

    > I think a generic solution is to make the whole map-selection 
"customizable",
    > à la mode-line-format.  But such a solution is non-trivial and so someone
    > needs to come up with a good design.

    The problem is that a specific package or mode might not have any
    clear idea of when its keymap(s) need to be used when combined with
    other packages and modes.

This is what makes it hard to design a good general solution.
But it is worth thinking about the problem; if someone finds such
a solution, it could be a big improvement.

    > decide which maps are active, but it's not so easy to implement
    > because some parts of the inner read-eval loop currently need to get
    > that list without allocating memory.

The eval function does not look at keymaps--perhaps he means
read_key_sequence.  It is definitely desirable for read_key_sequence
to be able to function without allocating memory, since many simple
commands can execute without allocating any (in simple situations).
Perhaps there could be a way to save the list of active keymaps for
reuse each time, and detect when the keymap situation has changed so
that there is a need to call the function again to decide what to do.