Re: position on changing defaults?

[Chong Yidong]

Dan Nicolaescu <address@hidden> writes:

> - transient-mark

Like Stefan, I am in favor of this change.

My thinking on this, however, is a little different.  I'm not in favor
of creating a new setting for transient-mark-mode if it involves
cumbersome keystrokes (e.g. C-SPC C-SPC instead of C-SPC).  The
reasoning is that transient-mark-mode is already easily accessible in
the Options menu on the menu-bar, so it's trivial for users to go back
to the old behavior.  So the question is whether complete newbies, who
haven't even tinkered with the Options menu, would be more comfortable
with the invisible mark or transient-mark-mode.

My feeling is that transient-mark-mode is more intuitive to use, since
you can see exactly what is going on.  The invisible mark is a more
"advanced" mode of editing: it allows you to have an active mark while
editing, but the mark is not displayed and you have to remember where
it is.  Thus, transient-mark-mode is more suitable for newbies.

> - selection with Shift-arrow keys

I think this would be a good default.  If someone is willing to make a
patch that refactors this code from cua-mode into simple.el, it would
be worth considering.

> - show-paren-mode on by default

I don't think this should be done.  I think the default blink-paren
behavior is a good default; show-paren-mode can be annoying.  For
those who like it, it's already easily accessible in the Options menu
on the menu-bar.

> - iswitchb-mode on by default
> - bind ibuffer to C-x C-b
> - hide-ifdef-mode on by default for C/C++/objc
> - flyspell-mode on by default for text-mode

I don't see a need for these, but am open to discussion.