Re: CUA mode cursor color

[storm@cua.dk (Kim F. Storm)]

Miles Bader <miles@lsi.nec.co.jp> writes:

> I turned on CUA mode to check it out, and noticed that in addition to
> the behavior I expected -- C-x/C-c/C-v cut 'n' paste -- it also changed
> my cursor color.
> 
> After searching a bit, I found the following in cua-mode.el:
> 
>    ;; CUA mode indications
>    ;; --------------------
>    ;; You can choose to let CUA use different cursor colors to indicate
>    ;; overwrite mode and read-only buffers.
> 
> [This is apparently on by default too.]

Oops.  That's unintentional -- it should be off by default.  I'll fix that.


> 
> Is there a reason this is part of CUA mode?  Even if it's a nice feature
> (and I suppose it is, I was just surprised by it), it seems orthogonal
> to the main functionality of CUA mode.

There are two reasons:

- the rectangle code uses different cursor colors to indicate padding
  on/off.

- the cursor color and blink frequency changes when the global mark is
  active.

Personally, I found it difficult to separate this from a general
control of the cursor color based on insert/overwrite/read-only
status.

> 
> Why not move this stuff into a separate mode -- then people who don't
> want CUA mode can use it, and people who just want CUA mode won't have
> to go investigate why their cursor color keeps changing.

If someone like to work on this, feel welcome to rip out the code from
cua-base.el (or write something else).

Remember to make it possible for other packages to link their own
cursor color controls into it.

-- 
Kim F. Storm <storm@cua.dk> http://www.cua.dk