Re: How to replace string for a block?

[Vagn Johansen]

Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu> writes:

> In article <mailman.7904.1243427777.31690.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>,
>  Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> wrote:
>
>> > There's no need to narrow the buffer: just set the mark and the point
>> > and M-x replace-{string,regexp} won't go beyond, as documented.  Well,
>> > you've activated transient-mark-mode, of course.  Who would disable it?
>> 
>> I would.  Actually, I have.  transient-mark-mode is an ill thought out
>> conflation of several logically unrelated features, some of which have
>> names which can only have been thought up when their namers were smoking
>> something soothing, complicated to use, and utterly at variance with
>> Emacs's ethos of elegant simplicity and keeping out of the user's way.
>> 
>> Some people seem to like it, though.  ;-)
>
> I've been an Emacs user for almost 30 years.  For at least half that 
> time transient-mark-mode didn't even exist, and after it was added (for 
> the benefit of converts from PC word processors, I believe) I resisted 
> enabling it for a long time, it seemed like sacrilege.  But I finally 
> gave in a couple of years ago when I started using Emacs in GUI mode 
> heavily at work, and I'm happy I did. 

Why? What did you gain?

I immediately disabled it when was introduced. Mostly due to a
(possibly unfounded) fear of having to press C-g all the time to
disable the mark.

> I particularly like when commands automatically operate on either
> the buffer or region depending on whether it's enabled.  I installed
> shell-command.el, which makes shell-command-on-region do this
> automagically.

shell-command-on-region is a part Emacs (simple.el). The
shell-command.el I know of augments this with completion features.


But anyway, you don't even need transient-mark-mode enabled to do
this.

Calling set-mark twice (C-SPC C-SPC) enables transient-mark
temporarily (~ transient-transient-mark-mode :-) ). I use it all the
time with M-; (comment-dwim)


-- 
Vagn Johansen