Re: `C-b' is backward-char, `left' is left-char - why?

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

"Ehud Karni" <ehud@unix.mvs.co.il> writes:

> On Sun, 05 Jun 2011 20:10:32 +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>>
>> > I think I know why Microsoft (and following them, openoffice) did
>> > this non intuitive choice - They use shift+arrow to select text
>> > strings and the string must be in adjacent memory locations.
>>
>> So does Emacs.
>
> But Emacs does not select with the arrows, so it can work like Firefox
> strict visual.
shift-select-mode is a variable defined in `simple.el'.
Its value is t

Documentation:
When non-nil, shifted motion keys activate the mark momentarily.

While the mark is activated in this way, any shift-translated point
motion key extends the region, and if Transient Mark mode was off, it
is temporarily turned on.  Furthermore, the mark will be deactivated
by any subsequent point motion key that was not shift-translated, or
by any action that normally deactivates the mark in Transient Mark mode.

See `this-command-keys-shift-translated' for the meaning of
shift-translation.

You can customize this variable.

[back]


However, there is no reason that straight visual movement when using
shift-selection would interfere with selection as such: you just can't
expect that the marked region is visually contiguous.  The size of the
selection will jump when crossing visually from L2R and R2L.

But I see no logical problem with that.

-- 
David Kastrup