Re: Why act from point forward by default, instead of whole buffer?

[Richard Stallman]

    General question that occurred to me while reading thread "keep|flush-lines,
    how-many to be used backward": What is the advantage of having such commands
    (`keep-lines' and many others) act, by default, from point forward instead
    of (by default) on the entire buffer?

    They do act on the region, if it is active, so that's good. But why not have
    the entire buffer be the default if the region is not active? I use that
    behavior for many commands I define.

It is historical tradition and I would rather not change it.