Re: Proposal: Bind backspace and delete like DEL in view-mode

[Kai Großjohann]

address@hidden (Kim F. Storm) writes:

> address@hidden (Kai Großjohann) writes:
>
>> > The problem is that define-key is built-in while kbd is not.
>> 
>> In what way is kbd not built-in?  No `require' statement is necessary
>> to be able to use it.  Just put it in your ~/.emacs file and Bob's
>> your uncle.
>
> You suggested that define-key (written in C) should use some
> heuristics to determine whether it should call the kbd macro (in
> subr.el) to expand the string.  I'm not sure, but there could be a
> problem doing this (if subr.el or edmacro.el isn't loaded yet).

Ah!  Now I understand.  Well, subr.el is dumped (see lisp/loadup.el),
but edmacro.el isn't.  But read-kbd-macro has an autoload cookie, so
I guess it's not a problem to just use it.

So.  I'm not convinced that define-key should use such heuristics --
it might too easily fail.

Maybe teaching novices about the extra parentheses and `kbd' to put
in isn't so bad.

kai
-- 
Simplification good!  Oversimplification bad!  (Larry Wall)