Re: On keybindings and the slow erosion of help's utility

Ihor Radchenko [2026-08-02 09:45:57] wrote:
> Stefan Monnier <[email protected]> writes:
>>>> If the last command is also a partial binding and it doesn't match, then
>>>> we can do something similar to calling `undefined`, tho maybe with
>>>> a tweaked message.  I don't see any difficulty here.  Am I missing something?
>>> Yes. Consider that we want to define the partial binding in
>>> foo-minor-mode-map. If nothing match, we also want to continue resolving
>>> the keymaps in the usual order.
>> That's not a problem: the main point I'm proposing is that the keymap
>> lookup looks at all the keymap and builds an overall
>> `composite-command`.  So, different pieces can be in different keymaps
>> and get combined into a single `composite-command` during the
>> key lookup.
> Do I understand correctly that this will make it impossible for the
> dynamic bindings to return a keymap?

I wouldn't say "impossible", but yes we wouldn't want to use it for
dynamic bindings that return keymaps because it would re-introduce many
of the problems we're trying to address.

IOW, I think it can be a good solution to multiplex several command
bindings on a single key, but not to multiplex several keymaps on
a single prefix.

The keymaps case would be better handled by the current `menu-item :filter`.


=== Stefan