Re: virtual space?

[brakjoller@hotmail.com (Barman Brakjoller)]

> > Why would you want to move the cursor somewhere if you don't plan to
> > edit anything there?
> 
> Having the cursor move to somewhere where I didn't tell it to go is
> annoying.  For example, imagine holding down the up or down arrow key to
> move some distance in a file, like from the bottom of a window to somewhere
> in the middle.  The cursor should move directly up the column it started in.
> But emacs doesn't do that.

I agree with you and I disagree with you:

1. I am annoyed with all people that answers "M-x picture-mode" to
this question all the time, when they clearly (yes, I really believe
that) see that in most cases picture-mode is not what the person
wants.

2. I understand that you are frustrated by the cursor jumping around,
I can see your point from a GUI/user experience point of view. But as
someone here said, are there any "real" benefits from this virtual
cursor? If there were I would expect that someone actually implemented
it in emacs. What do you want to *do* in that virtual place?

Hmm, come to think of it, I can actually find a valid use for it.
Imagine this text in a buffer:

blah blah blah
blah blah<-buffer ends here

If you have the buffer text above, it is *impossible* to copy a
rectangle with  all the content of the buffer without needing to add
extra spaces at the end of the last line to get the cursor to the same
column as the third "blah" on the first line. Right? Having a virtual
cursor would solve the problem.

Anyway, this is no big problem for *me*.

/Mathias