Re: delete-selection-mode

[Stefan Monnier]

> If delete-selection-mode affects only what DEL does after a
> mouse-selection, then it should have no effect on editing in the
> normal Emacs way with keyboard commands.  Perhaps there is no
> particular reason to do, here, anything other than what beginning
> users ask for.

It does have many more effects.  The most significant one is that any
self-inserting key typed when the region is active will cause the region
to be deleted before the char is inserted.

If the fact that the region is active at that point "is right"
(i.e. you indeed intended to highlight that region), then deleting it is
probably the right thing to do.

But if the region is active by accident (e.g. the fact that it's
highlighted is something you grudgingly live with since t-m-m was made
the default), then you may get annoyed that merely inserting a char at
point ends up deleting all the text that happened to be highlighted.

I think delete-selection-mode makes sense, FWIW, but I can also see that
it might annoy some users, although these should pretty much only be the
users who don't like t-m-m but don't hate it enough to go through the
trouble of turning it off.  Not sure how many of them might be
out there.


        Stefan