Re:Not on Unix? (Score 1)

... does the causation run the other way round - because all the obscure Emacs keybindings are so well known by its users (and developers), they can't be changed?

My theory is that it's because the geeks just change the keybindings however they want in their .emacs file and the non-geeks either find the standard keybindings tolerable enough to live with, or so UNpalatable that they wander off to other choice of editor. What do you end up with then?: No significant tide of sentiment for change among the people who actually use Emacs.

I have seen quite a few examples posted by other Emacs users in various places indicating that they bind two F-keys to do buffer cycling, just as I do. And add a binding for goto-line. And so forth.

Oh, and if the key bindings were changed someone on the Emacs maintenance team would have to revise a lot of documentation. :-( Not to mention other people having to look at their third-party documentation out there--for example someone at my company wrote a little web page giving eight or ten of the most commonly used Emacs keys.