use-empty-active-region

[Andreas Roehler]

Hi,

should have noticed earlier variable `use-empty-active-region' with change

Sun Dec 23 21:45:35 2007 UTC
Branch: MAIN
Changes since 1.890: +22 -0 lines
Diff to previous 1.890

Sorry commenting it that late.

AFAIR I've seen that kind of things, but always
considered it as being redundant, rather posing
problems than solving it.

Rationale is:

Certainly exists a need to decide if a function should
ignore an empty region or should send an error etc.

But AFAIU it can't be said all-at-once before, so a
variable and/or customization makes no sense here. Its
up to the function called at place, to decide its
behaviour.

Problem for me too: you can't know, how the user has
set it: no function may relay on its setting. Thats
producing conflicts, if different developers assume
different default values to rely upon.

See you've got a bug report already

 bug#3873: 23.1.50; docstring of `region-active-p' is nonsensical

IMHO its not just the docstring.  Saying "That function
checks the value of `use-empty-active-region' as well."
introduces a third level, i.e. complexity.

So maybe drop it again?

Maybe I miss something?

Thanks a lot all

Andreas

GNU Emacs 23.1.50.1 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.12.0) of 2009-07-25