Re: Transient Mark Mode on by default

[Sascha Wilde]

Chong Yidong <address@hidden> wrote:
> Sascha Wilde <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> I liked the philosophy behind the old way better: make the defaults
>> simple and clean and leave it to the user to turn on all the bells,
>> whistles and trautonii he likes.
>
> Only within reason. 

Agreed.

> For example, we turn Font Lock mode on by
> default.

This is an interesting example, as Font Lock mode is actually one of the
features I my self like very much and I used to turn it on in my .emacs
long before it was made default.  But I'm still not perfectly sure, that
making it default was trttd.

> Similarly, Transient Mark mode works very well

One might argue, that Transient Mark mode is way more intrusive than
Font Lock.

> (due to years of Emacs hackers turning it on in their own init files),
> and provides a real benefit to new users (direct visual feedback).

I have to state that I'm very skeptical about that "new users"
argument.  Granted: it will help people coming from usual gui-driven
editors to "feel at home" -- but on the other hand I suspect that many
of this "oh I know this" features prevent new users from learning the
"Emacs way" of things, which IMNSHO is at least worth knowing it.

Further more, I recall from my newbie times, that being forced to look
at the manual for some rather basic features I expected from an editor
like Emacs to have, actually helped me, as it made me come across some
of the less obvious features early.

In short: a user who quickly believes to know how an elaborated tool
works is likely to miss something important.

[...]
> Don't worry---we aren't gonna go down the path of XEmacs.

Sooo good to read this... :-)

cheers
sascha
-- 
Sascha Wilde  :  "I heard that if you play the Windows CD backward, you
              :  get a satanic message. But that's nothing compared to
              :  when you play it forward: It installs Windows...." 
              :  -- G. R. Gaudreau