bug#16764: 24.3.50; Insertion point stops flashing when Emacs not hung -- please reconsider this new default behaviour

[N. Jackson]

At 23:18 -0400 on Sunday 2014-02-16, Stefan Monnier wrote:

>> Unless there is a good reason for turning it off, I would like to
>> request that you consider leaving it on by default.
>
> Applications shouldn't keep running code indefinitely when they're
> completely idle.  It's important for powersaving reasons.

Agreed.

Turning it off after five seconds might be a bit aggressive
though. Perhaps all you fast-thinking Emacs developers rarely pause in
your typing for longer than that, but I wouldn't consider a mere mortal
idle if they paused to think for a full twenty or thirty seconds!

Of course, it's one of those things where whatever default value you
choose, it's going to be the wrong one for most people.

In any case, being aware now of the reasons for the change has persuaded
me not to set blink-cursor-blinks to 0. For my set up, I have chosen a
value of 180.