Re: Enabling Transient Mark Mode by default

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

"Lennart Borgman (gmail)" <lennart.borgman@gmail.com> writes:

> David Kastrup wrote:
>> "Lennart Borgman (gmail)" <lennart.borgman@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> David Kastrup wrote:
>>>> "Lennart Borgman (gmail)" <lennart.borgman@gmail.com> writes:
>>>>
>>>>> Don't we all think that new users probably want the highlight the way
>>>>> cua-mode does it?
>>>> No, we don't.  That was easy.
>>> ;-)
>>>
>>> So some of us think that new users want highlighting in Emacs to
>>> differ from most other applications they use. Can someone summarize
>>> what differences we expect them to like? And maybe why?
>>
>> Because a web browser is not an editor?  Because in other applications
>> it is usual only to mark small visible areas instead of large ones?  And
>> do that with the mouse (which works in Emacs just as expected, anyway)?
>
> In what way does cua-mode interfere here? (Except for the key
> bindings.)

Could you please focus on one argument at the time?  cua-mode in its
entirety completely messes up the predictability of key presses.
Essentially, you can throw Emacs manuals and the Emacs reference card
into the garbage bin: it will only work at unpredictable times.  That is
not a setting for newbies.

You are talking about the highlighting that is pretty much equivalent to
transient-mark-mode.  And that is annoying to me.  Not least of all
because it is intertwined with active region restrictions for many
commands, and again this is something that will be surprising to the end
user if he did nothing special to restrict the region in that manner.

>> If new users wanted everything to be the same as elsewhere, they
>> would not try Emacs in the first place.  For example, cut&paste&kill
>> using the mouse in Emacs is vastly superior to how other applications
>> do it (they require using the keyboard for that, or context menus, or
>> toolbar buttons).  It would be nonsensical to make Emacs inferior so
>> that people don't have to learn how Emacs is better than their usual
>> applications.
>
> What you say here seems reasonable, but I never use a mouse in Emacs.

Do you really think that you are in the best position to speak for
newcomers then?

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum