Hi Richard.
On 9/29/2011 11:42 PM, Richard Stallman wrote:
In Emacs 24, now in pretest, a change is being considered for ASCII
DEL (on most keyboards, the Backspace key) and the Delete function
key. The change affects the case of an active region that was not
dragged with the mouse. The change is that these commands would
delete the region, rather than just one character as now.
In the past, this behavior was enabled in some minor modes: CUA mode,
Delete Selection mode, and PC Selection mode. In the 24.0.90 pretest,
this behavior is enabled by default. Thus, building and using the
pretest is an easy way to try the change.
Here are the questions we hope you will answer:
* Are you in favor of this change?
No. I would not favor this change.
* Are you opposed to this change?
Yes. I would oppose the change.
* How strongly do you feel about the matter?
Rather strongly.
We don't want to just "count votes" -- we want to understand
how this affects users. So if you care about the issue,
please tell us how the change affects your editing.
* What are the cases where you find it helps?
There are no cases.
* What are the cases where you find it hurts?
If I understand the proposal correctly, the idea is to bind the
function normally bound to C-w to the BACKSPACE key and the Delete
key. Have I got that right?
As things currently stand, there are three different kinds of delete
functionality I use: delete 1 character backward, delete 1 character
forward, and delete the marked region. For over 25 years I've been
used to those functions being invoked by BACKSPACE, C-d, and C-w
respectively. Yes, I could retrain myself, just as I had to do
years ago when IBM put the CTRL key in the wrong place. But it will
inevitably be a big pain.
If it weren't core functionality you were proposing changing the
assignments of, I probably wouldn't care. But delete functionality
is some of the most basic functionality of any editor, just as stop
functionality is some of the most basic functionality of a car.
What do you think would happen if some car manufacturer decided to
violate the established standard that the brake pedal is to the left
of the gas pedal? If that were to happen, I'm pretty sure there
would suddenly be a whole lot more car crashes because people would
be confused about which pedal does what. Changing keystroke
assignments isn't going to cause life-threatening crashes, but it
will inevitably cause millions of pico-crashes -- not anything
that's going to cause serious harm, but enough to cause real
annoyance.
I remember back during the Apple look-and-feel wars you were
distributing a flyer arguing that if look-and-feel had been the law
of the land when the typewriter keyboard was first designed, every
typewriter company would have had to invent its own incompatible
layout, and instead of typists we'd have Remington keyboard typists,
Smith-Corona typists, Olivetti typists, etc. Keystroke letter
assignments on a typewriter and keystroke function assignments for
critical functionality in an editor should change seldom or never.
* What is your level of Emacs experience?
After about 10 years of using vi, I switched to Emacs around 1990,
and it's been my preferred editor ever since. However I'm
embarrassed to admit that I've never gotten around to teaching
myself Emacs Lisp. It's truly amazing how much you can get done
with Emacs even without programming it!
A further change in the same area has been suggested: when there is an
active region, a self-inserting character would delete the region
before the character is inserted by default.
* What would you think of this further change?
It sounds like the goal here is to make Emacs behave like MS Word.
Why? If I wanted to use Word, I'd run Word or Libre Office.
Please send your responses to emacs-delete-poll@gnu.org.
I do appreciate that you're asking your users' opinions. I hope you
decide the right way, i.e. my way :-). (That's a joke, I say, that's
a joke, son! -- Foghorn Leghorn)
Mark Rosenthal
mbr@arlsoft.com
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