[Orgmode] Re: question about org-region-active-p

[Bernt Hansen]

Hi Carsten,

Just to add to the discussion, transient-mark-mode is off for me in GNU
Emacs 22.2.1 (i486-pc-linux-gnu, X toolkit, Xaw3d scroll bars) of
2008-11-09 on raven, modified by Debian.

If I start with emacs -q transient-mark-mode is nil.

I've explicitly set it on in my .emacs (as of the beginning of this
discussion) and that makes things work better for me.

,----[ end of my .emacs ]
| (transient-mark-mode 1)
`----

Regards,
Bernt

Carsten Dominik <address@hidden> writes:

> Dear Robert,
>
> also region-active-p requires transient-mark-mode to be active, if you
> look
> at the definition of the region-active-p function, you will see that.
>
> transient-mark-mode is on by default in Emacs.  Why did you turn it
> *off* in the
> first place?????
>
> - Carsten
>
> On Dec 17, 2008, at 3:12 PM, Robert Goldman wrote:
>
>> Carsten Dominik wrote:
>>> Hi Robert,
>>>
>>> no, I do not think this would make sense, to step out with
>>> an error, because all the commands that need a region will
>>> also work without one.  This is how regions work in Emacs.
>>>
>>> If you find places in the documentation where this could
>>> be made clearer, let me know.
>>
>> Thank you Carsten for the response.  I am still inclined to think that
>> this case is one where the user should get some warning because it's
>> in
>> that bad class of bug-like situations where code quietly does
>> something
>> that the user does not expect and that contradicts the documentation.
>>
>> On the other hand, I can't see where one would raise an error.  It's
>> not
>> an error to call org-region-active-p without transient-mark-mode;
>> indeed
>> some libraries turn this on and off, and the user is entitled not to
>> use it.
>>
>> The call to export isn't right, because the export command does not
>> give
>> the system any opportunity to infer whether the user intended to
>> operate
>> on a region or on the whole.  So there's no way to tell that the
>> user's
>> expectations are going to be violated.
>>
>> The loading of org-mode isn't the right place, either, since the vast
>> majority of org-mode works just fine with t-m-m turned off.
>>
>> I'm inclined to think that the answer is simply that one shouldn't
>> turn
>> transient-mark-mode off, ever.  This works for me, but I hate to think
>> of the next person coming along to fall into this same trap, from
>> which
>> the only means of escape is to inspect the source code and use the
>> debugger.
>>
>> I would suggest a modification to the manual and will submit one, but
>> need clarification about one issue:  the use of t-m-m seems to be a
>> fallback for older emacsen that don't have region-active-p.  I have
>> such
>> an emacs, so I don't know --- does this mean that on newer emacsen
>> org-region-active-p will work even without transient-mark-mode?
>>
>> Best,
>> Robert
>
>
>
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