Re: Enabling Transient Mark Mode by default

[Juri Linkov]

> Whenever I use "emacs -Q" or some similar "vanilla Emacs", the first
> thing that I'm urged to do is M-x transient-mark-mode (and it was
> already N°1 back when fotn-lock-mode wasn't the default).

On environments where I need to start Emacs without .emacs, enabling
transient-mark-mode is the second thing I do.  The first thing
is enabling x-select-enable-clipboard which is much worse because
it requires typing M-: (setq x-select-enable-clipboard t) whereas
M-x transient-mark-mode is easier to type and even without it
C-SPC C-SPC is a real saver.

> Of course, I'm sure I'd be able to learn to live without it.  It seems
> like an option affect people *very* strongly, so those who want it
> *really* want it, and those who don't *really* don't.

As I understand one of the goals of enabling transient-mark-mode was
to make newbies more comfortable with Emacs, yet we achieve nothing.
When newbies run Emacs for the first time, they expect the same behavior
as in other their familiar programs.  For selecting the region of text most
modern programs provide two ways: with the mouse (already enabled by default
in Emacs), and by using arrow keys while holding the SHIFT key.  The latter
is still disabled by default.

So I think in addition to (or instead of) enabling transient-mark-mode,
we should enable a more close equivalent of selecting the region in
most programs, that is either pc-selection-mode or cua-selection-mode.
The question of using C-SPC to activate the region actually is
unrelated here because there are no equivalents to C-SPC in other
programs, so this is a separate question.

I see no objections against enabling SHIFT keys for region selection by
default (contrary to enabling transient-mark-mode :), except for
implementation details that can be fixed, of course.

-- 
Juri Linkov
http://www.jurta.org/emacs/