Re: DEL key doesn't kill mouse-dragged region

[Stefan Monnier]

>>>>> "Drew" == Drew Adams <address@hidden> writes:

>> With the most recent Emacs CVS, NOMIYA Masaru reported he cannot
>> delete the region that is made by dragging the mouse, using DEL
>> key.  I also confirmed Emacs 21.4 works but 22.0.50 doesn't.
>> Not much many people might not know such a function, though (and
>> I was not an exception).  Isn't it a side effect of some change?

>     Hopefully, this is the opportunity to kill this "feature".
>     If people want something like that, they should use
>     delete-selection-mode.

>   Experienced users who want something like that can use
>   delete-selection-mode.  However, I'm concerned about beginners who
>   expect this behavior based on other editors.

>   Typing DEL after dragging a region is something that an experienced
>   Emacs user is unlikely to do.  So why not make it do what beginners
>   expect?

If your beginners expect it, then they probably have a background where the
same behavior is expected from the `delete' key (which in my experience
those beginners use *much* more extensively than backspace) and also from
many other commands.  Basically they'd expect something like
delete-selection-mode so making it work for one particular case but not for
all the others is rather odd.  Most likely that those beginners would
feel exactly like the OP in this thread: the feature is buggy and only
works occasionally.

> Why not just turn on delete-selection-mode and transient-mark-mode, by
> default?

I definitely agree w.r.t transient-mark-mode.  It's not perfect, but at
least the visual feedback makes it pretty clear what's going on.

For delete-selection-mode, I have no opinion.


        Stefan