From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Alan Mackenzie Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: delete-selection-mode as default (WAS: Some developement questions) Date: Sun, 9 Sep 2018 13:45:29 +0000 Message-ID: <20180909134529.GB6047@ACM> References: <83k1nxvm5j.fsf@gnu.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: blaine.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: blaine.gmane.org 1536500740 17667 195.159.176.226 (9 Sep 2018 13:45:40 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@blaine.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 9 Sep 2018 13:45:40 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Mutt/1.10.1 (2018-07-13) Cc: hw@adminart.net, spacibba@aol.com, Noam Postavsky , emacs-devel@gnu.org, drew.adams@oracle.com, phillip.lord@russet.org.uk To: Eli Zaretskii Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sun Sep 09 15:45:35 2018 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1fz01v-0004W3-D3 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 09 Sep 2018 15:45:35 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:47518 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fz041-0005qo-7P for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 09 Sep 2018 09:47:45 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:53872) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fz03v-0005qU-BN for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 09 Sep 2018 09:47:40 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fz03q-0007Ll-Om for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 09 Sep 2018 09:47:39 -0400 Original-Received: from colin.muc.de ([193.149.48.1]:22340 helo=mail.muc.de) by eggs.gnu.org with smtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fz03q-0007AG-G6 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 09 Sep 2018 09:47:34 -0400 Original-Received: (qmail 24114 invoked by uid 3782); 9 Sep 2018 13:47:33 -0000 Original-Received: from acm.muc.de (p5B147DDC.dip0.t-ipconnect.de [91.20.125.220]) by colin.muc.de (tmda-ofmipd) with ESMTP; Sun, 09 Sep 2018 15:47:31 +0200 Original-Received: (qmail 6176 invoked by uid 1000); 9 Sep 2018 13:45:29 -0000 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <83k1nxvm5j.fsf@gnu.org> X-Delivery-Agent: TMDA/1.1.12 (Macallan) X-Primary-Address: acm@muc.de X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: FreeBSD 9.x [fuzzy] X-Received-From: 193.149.48.1 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:229554 Archived-At: Hello, Eli. On Fri, Sep 07, 2018 at 09:47:52 +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote: > Feel free to start a user poll, though: if it turns out I'm the only > one who thinks delete-selection-mode is inappropriate in programming > modes, we can make it the default; I can easily turn it off in my > configuration. Though I would urge people to actually try this in > programming modes before responding, and in any case the poll should > request to provide the major modes used with the responses. No, you're not the only disliker of d-s-mode. I utterly detest it, to the point that Emacs's lack of this feature was one of the things which attracted me to Emacs in the first place. At last, an editing program with a rational, well thought out interface! A thing I hated about these other programs was that I could have spent a long time building up a (highlighted) region in them, only to lose it irretrievably on carelessly typing an arrow key without . As a result of things like that, I was never able to relax whilst using these programs - I had to remain hyper-alert to avoid the above sort of lossage. I appreciate that Emacs's d-s-mode doesn't suffer all these drawbacks, but it does suffer some of them. I believe delete-selection-mode is objectively bad; deleting/killing potentially large areas of text should not occur as a side effect of something whose main action is smalll (like inserting a single character). As well as being bad UI, it violates the "do one thing and do it well" principle. In the current polling exercise, I would urge those interpreting the responses to take account not merely of the numbers of supporters/detractors but the strength of feeling behind those responses. I've seen several such that strongly dislike d-s-mode, but haven't seen any saying "I utterly detest editors lacking delete-selection-mode". That suggests to me that we should not enable this mode by default. -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).