RE: Binding M-n and M-p toforward-paragraphandbackward-paragraphrespectively

[Drew Adams]

> I've got this bound globally as well.

Good for you.  Everyone is free to bind it globally.  And it's likely that you
bind it to different commands than the ones proposed.

> It just makes sense with the global idea that C- is for
> atomic movements, and M- for group movement.

That might be an argument for users to bind it, but that in itself is not an
argument for Emacs to bind it by default.  And it is certainly not an argument
to bind it to some specific key (which one?).

The fact is that when Emacs binds a key by default it sooner or later becomes
(mis)considered sacrosanct by at least some users, even though the docs try to
help users understand that they are free to change the default key bindings.

In the last discussion we had about binding some more keys by default (a
function key comes to mind), even by the middle of the discussion some users
were concluding that they shouldn't themselves bind the keys involved.  No
default binding had yet been decided on, but they were already thinking that the
key was reserved somehow for Emacs.

> When I first learnt about movement in emacs, I was quite
> surprised to see that those two weren't bound. Setting them as default
> would not inconvenience anyone (it'd only add bindings when none are
> present), and make emacs more coherent.

See above.  Making M-n be forward-paragraph by default doesn't make Emacs become
more coherent.  Making it be any of the other proposed commands doesn't either.
There is no particular command that is crying out to be bound by default to M-n.

And it is just as well to leave it unbound and thus obvious for users.  Users
such as yourself, who did just that: bound it to a command that you found useful
in your context.

> An issue though is that some modes bind these.

No, that's not an issue.  Mode bindings override global bindings all over the
place.  It's normal.

> And more keybindings is always a good thing, isn't it? ;)

More _default_ keybindings is not always a good thing.  It could even be argued
that reserving more keybindings for users (not just allowing them but reserving
them) might be a good thing.