upcase-region (was Re: Emacs starter kit - disabled menus)

[Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se>]

On Sun, 2011-05-01, Marco Parrone wrote:
> Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> writes:
>
>
>> And a +1 for your posting too! I don't have the heart to trim it while
>> replying.
>>
>> I can add that IMHO what you write also applies to giving copies of
>> your own .emacs to people.  Some (most?) people have a lot of
>> undocumented stuff in it. Like this which I inherited from a guy
>> called Per in 1996:
>>
>>     ;; Fix upcase-region and downcase-region
>>     (put 'downcase-region 'disabled nil)
>>     (put 'upcase-region 'disabled nil)
>>
>> I have no idea what it does ...

> It enables the downcase-region and upcase-region commands.
>
> It does so by setting the 'disabled property of the respective symbols
> to the value of nil.

Thanks! If I remove that stuff and run M-x upcase-region, I get a
message that it's disabled "because new users often find it
confusing".

Some searching shows that that happened in Emacs 19 (twenty years ago).
From NEWS.19:

    C-x C-u (upcase-region) and C-x C-l (downcase-region) are now
    disabled by default; these commands seem to be often hit by
    accident, and can be quite destructive if their effects are not
    noticed immediately.

(Interesting. I never typed those by mistake. ^X^C happens by accident
a lot these days, though -- ever since I started using vc-mode.)

/Jorgen

-- 
  // Jorgen Grahn <grahn@  Oo  o.   .  .
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