Re: substitute-key-definition vs. define-key MAP [remap ...]

[David Kastrup]

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <address@hidden> writes:

> Miles Bader writes:
>
>  > And it's _extremely_ handy for some uses... e.g., one of my favorite
>  > tricks is little minor-modes that bind [remap self-insert-command]...
>
> It's a handy hack, I'm sure.  I think there are better ways to achieve
> the same end, that's all.

Yes and no.  Within Emacs, menus, toolbars, and other stuff are all
routed through keymaps, making the hierarchic collection of the various
keymaps effectively another scoping tool.  Being able to solve the
remapping within that hierarchy rather than separately certainly makes
sense.

XEmacs, in contrast, has the separate concept of locale specifiers for
that sort of scoping.  So within the XEmacs framework, there might be
less ad-hoc looking ways to implement similar goals.

Personally, I find the keymap recycling of Emacs a hack with rather
straightforward semantics, certainly worth not having to worry about
another abstraction level that gets in the way even if you are only
concerned with keymaps and nothing else.

-- 
David Kastrup