Hi all,
The following recent commit in master branch slightly changes the behavior of C-x h or mark-whole-buffer.
http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/commit/?id=aeb613ea95b7970e66d663ec5cba54e9ec0528fa
I am writing because this fix for bug # 2589 is sort of related to bug # 21874. In the thread for the latter (
http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=21874 ), the solution was to set the cursor-intangible property to t in minibuffer-prompt-properties.
So I have the below in my config since then and it works great.
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(let ((default (eval (car (get 'minibuffer-prompt-properties 'standard-value))))
(dont-touch-prompt-prop '(cursor-intangible t)))
(setq minibuffer-prompt-properties (append default dont-touch-prompt-prop))
(add-hook 'minibuffer-setup-hook #'cursor-intangible-mode))
=====
My suggestion would be to add '(cursor-intangible t) by default to minibuffer-prompt-properties so that we don't need to modify individual simple functions like mark-whole-buffer. Originally the function did as the name says.. mark between (point-min) and (point-max). So the recent modification feels a bit "impure".
The cursor-intangible approach will fix the C-x h case and also the case in bug # 21874 where the cursor enters the minibuffer prompt when using arrow keys.
If a user desires to in fact select the whole minibuffer including the prompt, the original mark-whole-buffer (before this commit) will work if the user has removed the cursor-intangible property from minibuffer-prompt-properties.
Question:
- Should we revert mark-whole-buffer to its definition before this commit and mark-whole-buffer and make the cursor intangible by default in minibuffer prompt?
Kaushal