Re: delete-selection-mode

[Juri Linkov]

> Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:
>>     Let's make shift-selection and mouse-selection _identical_ with regard
>>     to the outcome, with regard to visuals and semantics.
>>
>> That seems like a good idea to me.
>
> _All_ types of visible selection should be the same, including t-m-m
> (C-SPC + movement) selections, to the greatest extent possible.
>
> Having multiple "types" of selection that are
> sorta-the-same-but-sorta-different is just going to make Emacs harder to
> use for everybody, and harder to learn for beginners.
>
> If a beginner tries to use (superior) Emacs-style marking (t-m-m),
> suddenly habits which seemed to work for them when using the mouse will
> fail.  This is bad.
>
> If an expert user wants to use DEL to delete a t-m-m region, that will
> fail, for no good reason.  This is stupid.
>
> Yeah, I know, mouse-selection is currently "special".   It shouldn't
> be -- that was a bad decision.  Adding shift-selection to the mix just
> makes things worse.

Unfortunately, shift-selection is already fundamentally different
from selecting the region with C-SPC and C-x C-x.  With shift-selection
typing a key that is not shift-translated deactivates the region.
It seems this difference is impossible to avoid because typing non-shifted
keys is how beginners expect to deselect the region.

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