Subject: bug#11522: 24.0.97; Bad doc about minor mode keys: (elisp) `Keymaps and Minor Modes'

From: "Drew Adams" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 19 May 2012 14:00:19 -0700

What (elisp) `Keymaps and Minor Modes' says is horribly wrong:
 
"The key sequences bound in a minor mode should consist of `C-c'
 followed by one of `.,/?`'"[]\|~!#$%^&*()-_+='.
 (The other punctuation characters are reserved for major modes.)"
 
Absolutely not.  The `C-c' minor-mode keys, yes.  Minor-mode keys in
general, no.
 
What it is correct to say about minor-mode key bindings is said,
carefully, in (elisp) `Key Binding Conventions'.  Nothing more
restrictive than that.  And it is better to provide a link to that page
than it is to try to repeat that information in `Keymaps and Minor
Modes'.
 
Regarding `C-c' key sequences: Few of them are reserved for major modes.
The rest of them are allocated to minor modes or to users (`C-c' +
letter).  That's the way the C-c-plus-punctuation restriction should be
presented: Minor modes get all C-c-plus-punctuation bindings not
mentioned in the major-mode list, and those are the only `C-c' keys they
get.
 
But the real doc bug here is that it says that minor-mode keys are
limited to `C-c' followed by a punctuation mark from the list shown.
Not at all.  Minor modes, like major modes, are by no means limited to
keys on prefix `C-c'!
 
In GNU Emacs 24.0.97.1 (i386-mingw-nt5.1.2600)
 of 2012-05-16 on MARVIN
Windowing system distributor `Microsoft Corp.', version 5.1.2600
Configured using:
 `configure --with-gcc (4.6) --no-opt --enable-checking --cflags
 -ID:/devel/emacs/libs/libXpm-3.5.8/include
 -ID:/devel/emacs/libs/libXpm-3.5.8/src
 -ID:/devel/emacs/libs/libpng-dev_1.4.3-1/include
 -ID:/devel/emacs/libs/zlib-dev_1.2.5-2/include
 -ID:/devel/emacs/libs/giflib-4.1.4-1/include
 -ID:/devel/emacs/libs/jpeg-6b-4/include
 -ID:/devel/emacs/libs/tiff-3.8.2-1/include
 -ID:/devel/emacs/libs/gnutls-3.0.9/include'