Re: query-replace-interactive

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

    1. When users see "(default a -> b)" text in the prompt and want
    to change the last replacement slightly, the first reaction is to type
    M-n to insert it into the minibuffer for editing, since this is the
    standard Emacs behavior.  Instead of that, they will get an error
    "End of history; no default available".

I misunderstood the idea of "(default a->b)".  Now that I see what
it really does, I agree with you that it has lots of problems.

Here's what I THOUGHT the idea was.

The idea is that M-x query-replace would read just one minibuffer argument.
That argument would have the form FROM->TO.  After the arg is read,
the interactive spec would split it apart at the -> to get the FROM
and TO strings, and they would become the arguments in the call
to query-replace.

Further, the default for this one argument would be the previous
argument to query-replace.  The default would be used if you type RET
and available to edit with M-n.

This is radical, perhaps too radical, but it is clean and coherent.