Re: Rethinking count-words-region

[Chong Yidong]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:

> What will such a change do to those who (like yours truly) disable
> transient-mark-mode, which AFAIK means the region is never active?  I
> do want to be able to count lines (if not words) in the region.
>
> At the very least, the command should behave like before if
> transient-mark-mode is disabled.

On reflection, I think the Bug#9429 change to count-words-region is
misguided.  If we want to be consistent with other parts of Emacs, like
ispell-word/ispell-region, we need two separate commands:

 - A count-*-region command that counts in the region, using
   (interactive "r").  Even if Transient Mark mode is active and the
   region is not active, it counts in the inactive region.  This is like
   ispell-region.

 - A count-* command that usually counts in the buffer.  If
   use-region-p, it counts in the region.  This is like ispell-word.