RE: 23.0.60; M-( and M-) should not be bound in ESC map

[Drew Adams]

>     > This is is not a good idea.  `insert-parentheses' and
>     > `move-past-close-and-reindent' should be bound only for 
>     > programming modes for which they actually make sense.  
> 
>     Inserting pairs of parentheses makes sense pretty much everywhere.
> 
> Yes.  And error messages that a beginner doesn't totally understand
> can happen in many ways in Emacs.  I think this change is too much
> just to eliminate a few cases of them.
> 
> Leaving well enough alone seems best to me.

Even leaving aside the opaque error messages and the waste of useful global
keys, this makes no more sense for non-programming modes than would
`blink-matching-paren' or `show-paren-mode'. Should we add those everywhere, as
well?

And we have `insert-pair' as well. If inserting matched parens is so appropriate
for text mode and all other modes, then surely the same must be true for {}, <>,
[], "", '', and `'. The same logic says we should bind `insert-pair'. Matching
"" is at least as important as matching ().

Don't argue only to support personal habits. If your argument makes sense, then
it makes sense also for `insert-pair', `blink-matching-paren', and
`show-paren-mode'.

It's no accident that this is defined in lisp.el. It's appropriate for
programming modes with nested parens.

> People are proposing lots of changes in long-settled aspects of Emacs,
> and I think this is a bad habit.  Each such proposal leads to a long
> discussion, which takes up lots of people's time.  And usually it
> doesn't achieve anything.

You're opening a general discussion not specific to this bug report.

Just because a decision was made long ago does not mean that it is the right
decision now or even that it was the right decision then.

I filed a bug report. The discussion is yours. Do as you like about the report.