emacs major mode keys not compatible as key sequence

By Xah Lee. Date: .

emacs key conventions are truly the worst possible.

suppose you have a Kinesis Keyboard with extra keys. So you want to make a thumb key as the prefix for all major mode keys.

You can't!

by convention, personal key space start with Ctrl+c then followed by a letter

by convention, major modes's keys start with Ctrl+c then Ctrl+someKey

So, you can't, because the major mode keys doesn't really have a clean prefix.

the only way to make major mode keys compatible with simple key sequence and still conform to convention is to have all major mode's keys start with Ctrl+c Ctrl+c. Which you can do if you are writing new modes, but existing modes will not change.

so you have this really sorry situation, basically impossible to fix.

The only way, is to get GNU emacs change it.