Re: delete-selection-mode

[joakim]

David Kastrup <address@hidden> writes:

> Juri Linkov <address@hidden> writes:
>
>>>> delete-selection-mode would be the default too, that's what everything
>>>> on the desktop does...
>>
>> I agree with Richard that the primary concern is doing what is useful
>> for newcomers.  One of the most frequent questions they ask is how to do
>> what most other editors do - to replace selected text with a typed
>> character or with yanked text, and to delete the region by typing <delete>
>> without copying it to the kill-ring.
>>
>> What they are asking for is delete-selection-mode,
>> but they can't find it in the documentation because
>> the feature name says nothing to beginners, and
>> they expect to take this functionality for granted.
>>
>> Some recent examples of such problems:
>>
>> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.help/60992> 
>> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.help/45623> 
>> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.help/42402>
>> Is that reason enough to enable delete-selection-mode by default?
>
> Since it interferes with Emacs-typical editing command sequences, my
> vote is "no".
>
> The question you appear concerned with is more "how can we make
> beginners shut up" rather than "how can we make beginners more
> productive with Emacs".
>
> Perhaps we should offer a submenu in "Help" about "Judicious differences
> to other editors", with rationales, an introducting section saying "Some
> default behaviors we considered useful enough to make them different
> from other editors, so we recommend that you try to get acquainted with
> the suggested mode of operation before deciding against it", maybe even
> with clickable links to customize-variable where you can turn some
> feature like delete-selection-mode on (and off again!).
>
> We could even go as far as to mark some customizable variables as
> "voteable" and have a mechanism where you can send all of your personal
> voteable settings to address@hidden

On a related note, I'm often wondering how Emacs-veterans would solve
a problem(having used Emacs only since '88 I can only count myself as
newbie). This information could be gathered automatically with a command
frequency collector that posted to a central repos. If I, as a newbie
were wondering how often address@hidden invokes the scrollbar, maybe I
would find 0. Maybe I could find out all sorts of interesting things
that bother me, like how others jumps to a particular window
efficiently(I use windmove on shift-arrows which I'm not completely
comfortable with).

Maybe people could be persuaded to also post relevant sections of their
.emacs to ELPA? Then a new user could quickly try out how various people
with mouse centric, or keyboard centric, views where using Emacs, and
build their own opinion.

-- 
Joakim Verona