I guess not much, I beleive you just need to change the parser to parse <delete> instead of d. Actually it might even make codebase more simple, since it’s more easy to parse <delete> than d ( d is ambigious, it could be a d from insert mode )
It does goes again the original design, but I think this original idea can be criticize. Think of people using non qwerty keyboard that need to remap the “hjkl;:” , it makes kakoun script hard to read/write .
and with threads like “kakoune-needs-a-real-scripting-language”, I begin to smell the history of Vimscript (ex, execute, variable and control flow)… which triggers me (PTSD, sorry) toward this kind of reaction The Inner Platform Effect.
I hate Vimscript too and I’m also against kakoune going this direction. But this is not about creating a scripting language for kakoune. It’s about using another naming convention for stuff that already exist : using full words instead of letter ( <delete> instead of d).
So inner platform effect at all ! No added complexity either, just a different naming convention.