RE: Tentative diagnosis of TMM's problem. [Re: Enabling TransientMark Mode by default]

[Drew Adams]

> > Do C-SPC to set the mark. Then click mouse-1 somewhere 
> > else. Point has moved away from the mark, but the region is 
> > not active, so no highlighting.
> 
> > That would still be true for the idea I suggested. The 
> > region would not be activated just by moving the cursor;
> > that's all. That's similar to what happens in other apps,
> > AFAIK.
> 
> Okay, those two lines suggest a possible misunderstanding, or you were
> just talking loosely - in tmm,  C-SPC sets and activates the mark.
> mouse-1 clicking (or zero-length drag) just happens to deactivate it.

Correct. And the net result is that point has moved away from mark and the
region is inactive.

> Moving the the cursor after C-SPC doesn't activate the mark in tmm, it
> just makes the already-active region become nonzero sized.

Correct.

And see my follow-up message. Instead of suggesting that point movements not
activate the mark (which, as you noted, is speaking loosely), I suggested
that C-SPC not activate the mark. 

With that suggestion, the region would become active only by explicit
activation via, e.g., `C-x C-x'. When inactive, Emacs pros can still use the
region and the mark (assuming non-nil `mark-even-if-inactive', by default).
And Emacs newbies (and some oldbies) can have their highlighted-selection
behavior.

The premise for this is that the newbies (and oldbies such as myself) don't
need to use the active region that comes automatically today from C-SPC +
cursor movement. They wouldn't mind hitting `C-x C-x' before doing something
that requires the active region.