Re: Shift selection using interactive spec

[Thomas Lord <lord@emf.net>]

I just want to add that shift-marking is really important
and that thinking about reducing it to a familiar state
machine is valuable, if it can be done:

This is one of the #1 user interface *obstacles*
for new Emacs users who have experience in typical
GUI apps.   If Emacs *can*, in a natural way, offer
such users *exactly what they expect* then that is
probably worth doing!

It's icing on the cake that these features would fit
in very nicely with the traditional Emacs command
set, benefiting "power users" at least as much as
GUI-corrupted-newbies.

There is an opportunity here, in my opinion, to
make Emacs a lot more approachable, to many
more people, without needing the kind of
"you're using Emacs... but not really" indirections
of things like VI modes, transient-mark-mode,
etc.     Transient-mark-mode and delete-mode
seem to me to have, in retrospect, been mistakes
that tried unsuccessfully to work around the
absence of the three special variables that I described.
(Had they been successes, probably they could have
been enabled by default.)

-t