Re: Why was `transient-mark-mode' turned off for `delete-selection-mode'?

[David Kastrup]

Drew Adams <address@hidden> writes:

> 2. There are now 4 possible behaviors that a user can
> choose:
>
> a. d-s mode on  and t-m mode on
> b. d-s mode off and t-m mode on
> c. d-s mode off and t-m mode off
> d. d-s mode on  and t-m mode off
>  
> This is a good time to again consider the question of
> what the default behavior should be.  It is currently (b).
> I think it should be (a).
>
> (a) is the behavior most new users are used to.  It is the
> behavior I have preferred for Emacs, ever since it was first
> available, 20 or so years ago.
>
> (b) is the behavior we have now.

I think it shouldn't.

> I think (a) is the best choice for the default behavior,
> and (d) is arguably the second best choice.

I find myself trying to figure out a good way to unhighlight a selection
half of the time when I am trying to edit a link in a browser or
something that pops up highlighted for some reason.  It is total
nuisance behavior without a generally available way to turn the
unasked-for selection off.  The other half of the time I inadvertantly
delete material.  Sometimes it can be recovered by C-z (depending on the
application).  Sometimes not.

Your only argument so far has been "others do it".  But that's not, in
itself, a good reason to let Emacs adopt default behavior that gets in
the way of productive work.  "Now how do I undo that damage" _is_ a
distraction from whatever you have been doing.  I do get this in Emacs
when accidentally typing C-w (rather than C-e or something).  But typing
C-w accidentally does not occur as frequently as, well, typing anything
at all.

> But even then many of them interact with programs (e.g.
> web browsers) that have the behavior of (a).

In my case, that interaction involves a lot of swearing.

> 3. Besides having the limitation of not being able to just
> type to replace the region text, the current situation
> suffers from treating mouse selection exceptionally.
> A mouse selection has the deletion behavior of d-s mode,
> but without its type-to-replace behavior.

Are you sure about that?  Like, really sure?

-- 
David Kastrup