Re: Transient Mark Mode on by default

[Thomas Lord]

David Kastrup wrote:

I then tell them the answer (cua-mode), and 60% of the time they say,
"Why isn't that the default, LIKE IN EVERY OTHER PROGRAM?"
    

Because its keybindings conflict with that of Emacs.
  

See: I am pretty sure that is not really the problem.   User's
can cope easily with something as simple as that.

The problem is the strange way that Emacs tries to mix
its native "marker" concept with the "fat cursor" concept
that is found in other systems.    It's an unnatural mix, imo.

A subtle aspect of Emacs' architecture ca. 18.x is that
there's a simple, ad hoc but nice and comfortable, "state
machine" which is the buffer data structure with markers,
points, etc. -- and then Emacs lisp "scripts" over that and
Emacs lisp programs have the same logical "perspective"
as an interactive user.

The way tmm/cua stuff is getting done, it's drifting into
becoming just a big bundle of hair.   

A tiny tweak to the original simple core is the fat cursor
concept.

A hairy work-around is all this stuff that results because
no 10 users can seem to agree about how best to hork
the original concept of a "mark" to add the concept of
"active/de-activated".

TMM/CUA Announce to users familiar with those other
systems that "Ok, now we have something that works kinda-like
fat cursors but then there's also a ring for saving half of
the information in a fat cursor and sometimes that ring is
and other times it isn't itself the fat cursor and, anyway, there's
a whole bunch of options to figure out when it should do what
which is all cool cause, you know, just fix it in yr .emacs, luser."



-t