From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: semperos Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Poll about proposed change in DEL (aka Backspace) and Delete Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2011 04:24:08 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: References: <87litcvtu2.fsf@stupidchicken.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1321215920 29576 80.91.229.12 (13 Nov 2011 20:25:20 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2011 20:25:20 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sun Nov 13 21:25:17 2011 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([140.186.70.17]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1RPgc9-0007FF-4M for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sun, 13 Nov 2011 21:25:17 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:53747 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RPgc8-0008Il-Il for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sun, 13 Nov 2011 15:25:16 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([140.186.70.92]:58243) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RPgc4-0008Ig-0v for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Sun, 13 Nov 2011 15:25:12 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RPgc2-0002aL-Ts for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Sun, 13 Nov 2011 15:25:11 -0500 Original-Received: from lo.gmane.org ([80.91.229.12]:36678) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RPgc2-0002aH-HQ for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Sun, 13 Nov 2011 15:25:10 -0500 Original-Received: from list by lo.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1RPgc0-0007Cj-DB for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Sun, 13 Nov 2011 21:25:08 +0100 Original-Received: from ip72-196-201-145.dc.dc.cox.net ([72.196.201.145]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Sun, 13 Nov 2011 21:25:08 +0100 Original-Received: from daniel.l.gregoire by ip72-196-201-145.dc.dc.cox.net with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Sun, 13 Nov 2011 21:25:08 +0100 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Original-Lines: 52 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: sea.gmane.org User-Agent: Loom/3.14 (http://gmane.org/) X-Loom-IP: 72.196.201.145 (Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_7_1) AppleWebKit/535.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/15.0.874.120 Safari/535.2) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6 (newer, 3) X-Received-From: 80.91.229.12 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:82895 Archived-At: Richard Stallman gnu.org> writes: > > In Emacs 24, now in pretest, a change is being considered for ASCII > DEL (on most keyboards, the Backspace key) and the Delete function > key. The change affects the case of an active region that was not > dragged with the mouse. The change is that these commands would > delete the region, rather than just one character as now. > > In the past, this behavior was enabled in some minor modes: CUA mode, > Delete Selection mode, and PC Selection mode. In the 24.0.90 pretest, > this behavior is enabled by default. Thus, building and using the > pretest is an easy way to try the change. > > Here are the questions we hope you will answer: > > * Are you in favor of this change? > > * Are you opposed to this change? > > * How strongly do you feel about the matter? > > We don't want to just "count votes" -- we want to understand > how this affects users. So if you care about the issue, > please tell us how the change affects your editing. > > * What are the cases where you find it helps? > > * What are the cases where you find it hurts? > > * What is your level of Emacs experience? > > A further change in the same area has been suggested: when there is an > active region, a self-inserting character would delete the region > before the character is inserted by default. > > * What would you think of this further change? > > Please send your responses to emacs-delete-poll gnu.org. > I've been using Emacs seriously for about a year and a half. I am in favor of both proposed changes, that (1) a selected region can be deleted by pressing the del/backspace key and (2) if a region is selected, typing a new character first deletes the selected region and then inserts a character. In my opinion, this is the only intuitive behavior under these circumstances; I struggle to think of an alternative behavior that makes more sense. I still occasionally highlight a region, re-think, then press delete or type new characters, forgetting that Emacs does not behave like this currently in 23. -Daniel