Note: The information on this page is for older Emacs versions than 23.2. Starting with Emacs 23.2, ‘M-g g’ is bound to goto-line.
(Perhaps this page should be cleaned up a bit.)
I think goto-line is much more used than facemenu-* and M-g should be bound to M-x goto-line (as does Xemacs, BTW). I have never seen a newbie want to run a facemenu- function. Heck, even somewhat experienced users like me have no idea what those do. But lots of newbies ask how to goto-line, and are disappointed when they find no key. – DeepakGoel
‘goto-line’ to a key by default is fine, of course, but it shouldn’t be M-g. I admit that the facemenu-.* stuff is mostly interesting in combination with ‘enriched-mode’ and that it is probably not widely used. Emacs does not provide much word processor capabilities yet, but I hope that it will do so in the future. Default bindings are also important for rebinding them to conceptually similar commands in major modes. So if a mode provides some word processor-like functionality, M-g is the natural binding for commands that change the appearance of some text portions. As I said, there are not many such modes, but there will be, I am sure. (In fact I am working on one). --OliverScholz
I meant ‘natural’ in the sense that it is currently the place where such stuff should go. If you want M-g, because it is mnemonic for ‘goto-line’, then another keybinding for the facemenu stuff would be o.k. by me, provided that it is a top level one. It only occurred to me that you were about to discard a keybinding for `facemenu-.*’ entirely. – OliverScholzSee also PopularOptions, LineCommands.