Re: delete-selection-mode

[David Kastrup]

"Lennart Borgman (gmail)" <address@hidden> writes:

> David Kastrup wrote:
>>>>> Many new users expects this.
>>>> Not when they are not expecting an active region in the first place.
>>>> There are more ways to make a region active than the explicit ways that
>>>> a "new user expects".
>>> Why does that matter? Are we not talking about a visibly marked
>>> region?
>>
>> Not everybody searches the screen for tell-tale signs of an active
>> region before typing any letter.
>
> Yes, I know some long time Emacs users works this way (and that is
> understandable since the regions was not visibly marked before by
> default), but we are talking about the new users here.

New users are not inefficient morons.  And if they are, there is no
reason for them to stay thus.

>>>>> If the default will be that typing new text replaces the visible
>>>>> region then maybe there should be a substate where it is possible to
>>>>> type in new text while the region is visible? One way this could be
>>>>> done is to let C-x C-x go into that substate (in addition to doing
>>>>> what it does now).
>>>>>
>>>>> Would that be to inconvinient?
>>>> It sounds messy.  We already have too many different region states.
>>> But the wish to make this work for both new and old users call for a
>>> new state, right?
>>
>> Wrong.  I already proposed folding mouse-activated-deletion mode into
>> transient regions which would make for one less state, and provide a
>> somewhat less contentious part of delete-selection-mode.
>>
>> Is there a reason you are ignoring that particular proposal?
>
> Yes, I am not using the mouse if I can avoid it ;-)

It had nothing to do whatsoever with using the mouse.

> It was not my intention to ignore it of course. However rereading what
> you wrote I see that you said that there is no way for the average
> (new) user to deactivate the region. He/she can use the arrow keys
> without shift.

That does not deactivate a region when transient-mark-mode is used.
Could you please focus on _Emacs_ instead of whatever else you might be
thinking of?

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum