bug#60646: 28.2; delete-selection-mode

bug#60646: 28.2; delete-selection-mode

[Redekopp, Eric]

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I would like to express my strong support for enabling delete-selection-mode by default. This is standard for almost all other text applications and feels unintuitive not to have it.

Thanks for your consideration and keep up the good work.
Eric Redekopp, University Of Saskatchewan

In GNU Emacs 28.2 (build 1, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.24.34, cairo version 1.17.6)
 of 2022-09-12 built on frederik
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bug#60646: 28.2; delete-selection-mode

[Drew Adams]

> I would like to express my strong support
> for enabling delete-selection-mode by default.
> This is standard for almost all other text
> applications and feels unintuitive not to have it.

+1.  I've advocated the same for decades.

This should have happened when we turned on
`transient-mark-mode' by default.  And both
of those default-behavior changes should
really have happened long before that.

bug#60646: 28.2; delete-selection-mode

[Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors]

Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:

>> I would like to express my strong support
>> for enabling delete-selection-mode by default.
>> This is standard for almost all other text
>> applications and feels unintuitive not to have it.
>
> +1.  I've advocated the same for decades.
>
> This should have happened when we turned on
> `transient-mark-mode' by default.  And both
> of those default-behavior changes should
> really have happened long before that.

I disagree, but we've had this argument before, so please just leave
things as they are.

Thanks.

bug#60646: 28.2; delete-selection-mode

[Kévin Le Gouguec]

Po Lu via "Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text
editors" <bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> writes:

> Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:
>
>>> I would like to express my strong support
>>> for enabling delete-selection-mode by default.
>>> This is standard for almost all other text
>>> applications and feels unintuitive not to have it.
>>
>> +1.  I've advocated the same for decades.
>>
>> This should have happened when we turned on
>> `transient-mark-mode' by default.  And both
>> of those default-behavior changes should
>> really have happened long before that.
>
> I disagree, but we've had this argument before, so please just leave
> things as they are.
>
> Thanks.

Did we ever go through the length of making the sort of poll we had for
show-paren-mode?  I.e.

* deciding to poll users on emacs-devel,
  <E1mN4xu-0004y3-63@fencepost.gnu.org>

* announcing on info-gnu-emacs,
  <62f50784-593d-b302-b8b6-6d614ec37737@yandex.ru>

* collecting feedback on gnu-emacs-help,
  <9bc33df8-5c1b-cd82-f72e-6fc939990f37@yandex.ru>

* debriefing on emacs-devel.
  <2aed65dd-bcec-8e0e-e48b-7664a041f98b@yandex.ru>

Asking because

a) delete-selection-mode sounds (IMO) like one of these options that
meet the sweet (sour?) spot between triggering strong opinions ("Thou
Shalt Not Change Longſtanding Defaults", "But All Other Editors Do It",
"It Is Surprising And Destructive", "It Is Natural And Convenient"),
while being trivial to change in one's config either way,

b) For all the hassle it might have been, the poll and discussion around
it led to improvements to show-paren-mode, i.e. further fine-tuning of
the defaults.


I struggle to imagine how (b) could apply to delete-selection-mode, but
then again my imagination is very limited.  OTOH (a) might provide
enough justification for a poll, especially when coupled with the
recurring traffic that delete-selection-mode generates.

(Thinking of e.g. these emacs-devel megathreads:
 * <CAM-tV-8HZKJ9WKHXR0h8FC_Qv8YhjdAPYikcviD2HAUo6Msg4g@mail.gmail.com>
   (2018)
 * <20100318185435.GB1522@muc.de>
   (2010)

 Oh hey, well, (b) might not be off the table after all:

 > The _only_ problem I personally have with delete-selection-mode is
 > that it also replaces the region created by the likes of "C-x C-x",
 > something that "most software out there" does not and cannot do.  If
 > we were to change delete-selection-mode to replace only highlighted
 > text created by mouse selections or by shift-selections, I think we
 > could then enable it by default without much resistance, because
 > typing a character or DEL after explicitly selecting text is many
 > orders of magnitude less probable to be a mistake than when we make
 > the region active by other means.
 — <83o9d5q1bi.fsf@gnu.org>

 Enlightening; I personally C-x C-x C-g without a second thought when
 all I want is to "jump to mark" (or I use C-u C-SPC).  I use C-x C-x
 mostly for its region-activating effect (typically after C-y), rather
 than for its point-mark-swap effect, and I expect delete-selection-mode
 to clobber stuff I highlight with region-activating commands (C-M-SPC,
 C-x h, C-M-h, M-h, C-SPC + [move around]).

 But I understand how adding an option to control that would make sense)

bug#60646: 28.2; delete-selection-mode

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Cc: luangruo@yahoo.com, err291@mail.usask.ca, drew.adams@oracle.com
> From: Kévin Le Gouguec <kevin.legouguec@gmail.com>
> Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2023 12:51:57 +0100
> 
> >> +1.  I've advocated the same for decades.
> >>
> >> This should have happened when we turned on
> >> `transient-mark-mode' by default.  And both
> >> of those default-behavior changes should
> >> really have happened long before that.
> >
> > I disagree, but we've had this argument before, so please just leave
> > things as they are.
> >
> > Thanks.
> 
> Did we ever go through the length of making the sort of poll we had for
> show-paren-mode?

I think this was discussed in the past, yes.

delete-selection-mode is problematic in that it introduces behavior
that is extremely surprising and annoying to those who are used to the
old-style GUI selections and the Emacs region.  Thus, enabling it by
default is out of the question; we've enabled transient-mark-mode as a
partial nod to those who like the delete-selection-mode style of
replacing text, but other than that, people who want that will have to
enable it manually for the observable future, because we cannot
possibly surprise our veteran users with such behavior.

>  Oh hey, well, (b) might not be off the table after all:
> 
>  > The _only_ problem I personally have with delete-selection-mode is
>  > that it also replaces the region created by the likes of "C-x C-x",
>  > something that "most software out there" does not and cannot do.  If
>  > we were to change delete-selection-mode to replace only highlighted
>  > text created by mouse selections or by shift-selections, I think we
>  > could then enable it by default without much resistance, because
>  > typing a character or DEL after explicitly selecting text is many
>  > orders of magnitude less probable to be a mistake than when we make
>  > the region active by other means.
>  — <83o9d5q1bi.fsf@gnu.org>

Note that the DEL part of the above already happens by default.

bug#60646: 28.2; delete-selection-mode

[Visuwesh]

[சனி ஜனவரி 14, 2023] Kévin Le Gouguec wrote:

>  > The _only_ problem I personally have with delete-selection-mode is
>  > that it also replaces the region created by the likes of "C-x C-x",
>  > something that "most software out there" does not and cannot do.  If
>  > we were to change delete-selection-mode to replace only highlighted
>  > text created by mouse selections or by shift-selections, I think we
>  > could then enable it by default without much resistance, because
>  > typing a character or DEL after explicitly selecting text is many
>  > orders of magnitude less probable to be a mistake than when we make
>  > the region active by other means.
>  — <83o9d5q1bi.fsf@gnu.org>
>
>  Enlightening; I personally C-x C-x C-g without a second thought when
>  all I want is to "jump to mark" (or I use C-u C-SPC).  I use C-x C-x
>  mostly for its region-activating effect (typically after C-y), rather
>  than for its point-mark-swap effect, and I expect delete-selection-mode
>  to clobber stuff I highlight with region-activating commands (C-M-SPC,
>  C-x h, C-M-h, M-h, C-SPC + [move around]).
>
>  But I understand how adding an option to control that would make sense)

I had the same problem with delete-selection-mode: mark and region is
different from how "selection" works in other editors so deleting the
active region in all cases was more disruptive than I anticipated.
I hope delete-selection-temporary-region solves this problem for
everyone like it did for me when I proposed the patch. 

bug#60646: 28.2; delete-selection-mode

[Stefan Kangas]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> delete-selection-mode is problematic in that it introduces behavior
> that is extremely surprising and annoying to those who are used to the
> old-style GUI selections and the Emacs region.

That's probably true.  I'd personally not use the word "extremely" given
that it'd be relatively easy for veterans to turn it off (easier than,
say, for beginners to turn it on).

> Thus, enabling it by default is out of the question;

I don't agree, not completely, but this *is* long-standing behavior, and
a change would be controversial.  This has been discussed many times,
and it's been hard to find a new consensus.

I'm therefore closing this bug report.  Thanks for reporting it, and I'm
sorry if the conclusion is disappointing.  We will have a chance to
revisit this the next time someone brings it up.