Re: region-active-p

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

"Drew Adams" <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:
> A short name probably won't capture all 3 things this is a conjunction of:
> (1) tmm mode, (2) mark-active, (3) point diff from mark. The last can
> probably be dropped from the name, so perhaps `transient-region-p'?

I dunno, I think most of these "alternative" names are not very good.

Part of the problem is that "transient-mark-mode" is not a particularly
clear name itself; it's one of those names that, if you sit down and
think about it, you can kind of see where it came from, but it's
... awkward.  Oh well, tmm is too embedded to change, but we should aim
to use more intuitive names for new interfaces.

"region-active-p" is by contrast, a really good name:  I think it very
naturally captures the "sense" of what it does, even to someone not
entirely clear with the details of Emacs mark/region handling.

Personally I think we should just use region-active-p, with non-empty
test by default -- the incompatibility with xemacs is minor, and I think
it's far more important that the code in Emacs be clear.  I'm sure
package authors can cope in those (very few) cases where it actually
makes any difference.

> Whatever the name is, the doc string should make 1,2,3 clear.

Very true.

-Miles

-- 
Yo mama's so fat when she gets on an elevator it HAS to go down.