Re: delete-selection-mode

["Lennart Borgman (gmail)" <lennart.borgman@gmail.com>]

David Kastrup wrote:
>>>> Many new users expects this.
>>> Not when they are not expecting an active region in the first place.
>>> There are more ways to make a region active than the explicit ways that
>>> a "new user expects".
>> Why does that matter? Are we not talking about a visibly marked
>> region?
> 
> Not everybody searches the screen for tell-tale signs of an active
> region before typing any letter.

Yes, I know some long time Emacs users works this way (and that is 
understandable since the regions was not visibly marked before by 
default), but we are talking about the new users here.

>>>> If the default will be that typing new text replaces the visible
>>>> region then maybe there should be a substate where it is possible to
>>>> type in new text while the region is visible? One way this could be
>>>> done is to let C-x C-x go into that substate (in addition to doing
>>>> what it does now).
>>>>
>>>> Would that be to inconvinient?
>>> It sounds messy.  We already have too many different region states.
>> But the wish to make this work for both new and old users call for a
>> new state, right?
> 
> Wrong.  I already proposed folding mouse-activated-deletion mode into
> transient regions which would make for one less state, and provide a
> somewhat less contentious part of delete-selection-mode.
> 
> Is there a reason you are ignoring that particular proposal?

Yes, I am not using the mouse if I can avoid it ;-)

It was not my intention to ignore it of course. However rereading what 
you wrote I see that you said that there is no way for the average (new) 
user to deactivate the region. He/she can use the arrow keys without shift.

Anyway I think Jason's suggestion to use C-SPC is much better than my 
suggestion.