Re: AW: delete-selection-mode

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

"Berndl, Klaus" <klaus.berndl@capgemini-sdm.com> writes:

> Since Emacs editing interferes with typical editing commands today my
> vote is "yes".
>
> Of course this is a little bit provoking, so please do not feel
> offened!
>
> But IMHO the following is fact: Today Emacs has very strong
> competitors concerning "what is the most effective way to code my
> programs" - a lot of (commercial or free or open source) so called
> IDEs have adopted some of the pure editing power of Emacs but offer on
> top some power Emacs still lacks today, as for example real, fast and
> powerful refactoring, code navigation and other goodies you need much
> more for effective Code-development than some certain
> Emacs-specials.

If they offer real, fast and powerful refactoring, code navigation and
other goodies, then the way to compete with them is to add powerful
refactoring, code navigation and other goodies to Emacs.  If we make
Emacs the same as them, only worse, that won't help us.

Efficient user interaction is one area that Emacs is good in, partly due
to long discussions and diligent and carefully planned changes of
semantics.  Why should we sacrifice that before the problems in
connection with normal user operation have found solutions?

Emacs has useful syntax highlighting, useful transient marks, useful GUI
integration, in particular when compared with the "pathbreaker" XEmacs,
and part of the reason is that those features were not enabled until the
problems around them have found satisfactory solutions.

"Everybody else does it" is no substitute for efficient and useful
semantics.

-- 
David Kastrup