RE: Bikeshedding "user choice"

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Drew Adams writes:

 > > In general, if Emacs...hasn't bound the key, fall back
 > > to OS if available seems like a good idea (POLA).
 > 
 > Show a `... is unbound' message is also a good idea.
 > That's the standard behavior in Emacs (POLA).

Of course it is NOT the standard behavior in Emacs!  ALL normal keys
are normally bound, ALL control characters are normally bound, MOST
meta characters are normally bound.  The STANDARD BEHAVIOR of Emacs is
"All Keys Yours Now Emacs Keys Are" and they do something!  Arguing
from "standard behavior" of Emacs suggests that we bind this key now!

IOW, Lennart's proposal doesn't change the usual *behavior* of Emacs
(pressing a key usually does something).  It only changes the way it
is implemented (by delegating "choice of something" to the OS).  Of
course, in the case of this particular key, Emacs doesn't bind it, and
in that minor sense it changes behavior.  But get real; Emacs is not
about avoiding binding key sequences.  Emacs is about binding
everything in sight.  Heck, even the standard argument for not binding
a key sequence is "it might turn out to be useful and then people
would object to us binding it to something else in the future"!

 > > once the user has the capability of binding a key, then she
 > > has the choice to bind it to `ignore' or `unbound-event-error'
 > 
 > Or to a command that passes it through to the OS?  That would be the way we
 > normally define keys in Emacs.  Including the way we define default
 > bindings.

"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" how GNU Emacs implements this
default; I only care what the default is.  I imagine that Lennart
feels the same way.

 > I would prefer that approach to a `w32-passthrough-events' option, as I
 > mentioned.  For one thing, `C-h M-f4' etc. would tell you what the key does 
 > (at
 > least that it is passed to the OS).

I would not consider this feature complete if C-h M-F4 didn't do that
no matter how pass-through is implemented.

 > Ever hit a key accidentally?  Ever use `C-h k' to see what a key does?  Ever
 > change platforms?  I can see at least some Emacs users being surprised on
 > Windows when they hit the key and Emacs quits.

Sure, and so what about it?  Unless they have some other binding in
mind (in which case they should bind the key in .emacs and maybe lobby
on emacs-devel for making it the default binding), they won't do
*that* again.  People who *are* used to using it will find it to be a
serious annoyance.  The same argument about binding it and lobbying on
emacs-devel applies, of course.  Oops.  That's exactly how this thread
started!

 > No, that's not my goal.  I don't have a goal wrt the default behavior.  I've
 > been clear about that.

Not really, because you keep arguing implementation with people who
only care about the default behavior, and don't care about
implementation.  But you keep claiming that various implementation
strategies would result in bad behavior (though not necessarily of the
key itself, eg, what would C-h k do).  That isn't necessarily true (it
depends on how thorough Stefan and Yidong are about insisting that all
behavior be consistent with current behavior, *except* for the default
action of "keys not explicitly bound in Emacs"), you know.  Me, I get
the strong impression that despite disclaimers you *do* care about
default behavior (again, not necessarily of the key itself).