emacs-devel
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Documentation of transient-mark-mode is sloppy, wrong, and confused.


From: Alan Mackenzie
Subject: Re: Documentation of transient-mark-mode is sloppy, wrong, and confused.
Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 09:27:09 +0000
User-agent: Mutt/1.5.9i

Hi, Eli!

On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 11:37:26AM +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > From: Stefan Monnier <address@hidden>
> > Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 21:55:51 -0400
> > Cc: Chong Yidong <address@hidden>, address@hidden

> > > I think the answer has got to be along the following lines:  "The region
> > > is called @dfn{active} when Emacs marks it internally as the portion of
> > > buffer which any of a certain set of commands is to work on, when
> > > otherwise the command would use the whole buffer, or a single word, or
> > > some other portion of buffer.  When the region is active, the mark is
> > > also said to be @dfn{active}." - essentially the (iii) from my previous
> > > email.  Sorry for the poor wording - it's late and I'm tired.

> > I would find this fairly confusing

> So would I.  If you read this text carefully, it actually says
> something like "the region is active when Emacs marks it as active."
> That's hardly a definition of what "active" is.

Well, it's just as good as anybody else has come up with, so far!

But the criticism isn't quite fair.  My definition says "a region is
active, when it will make itself the object manipulated by any of the
commands `replace-string', `how-many', `keep-lines', `undo',
`ispell-word', `ispell', `Mouse-3', `indent-for-tab-command',
`fill-paragraph', `sgml-tag', <setting of colour text properties>,
`set-justification-left/right/center/full/none', `comment-dwim',
<VC-Directory-Mode's m, u commands>, <Stuff when delete-selection-mode
is enabled>, `keyboard-quit'".  At least, it would have done if I'd've
been wide enough awake.

Do you agree or disagree with me that this is what "active" means,
regardless of my clumsy way of saying it?  If you disagree, what do
think "active" actually does mean?

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).




reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]