From: Andreas Roehler <andreas.roehler@online.de>
To: "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org>
Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Documentation of transient-mark-mode is sloppy, wrong, and confused.
Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 12:45:59 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <4A1FBCE7.6020401@online.de> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <871vq8cjxq.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> Eli Zaretskii writes:
>
> > > > email. Sorry for the poor wording - it's late and I'm tired.
> > >
> > > I would find this fairly confusing
> >
> > So would I. If you read this text carefully, it actually says
> > something like "the region is active when Emacs marks it as active."
> > That's hardly a definition of what "active" is.
>
> Read a little more carefully. It also explains how the behavior of
> Emacs changes when the mark is active. That *is* a definition of
> "active". ACM did say he was tired, but he's rarely *that* tired.
>
> How about
>
> In Emacs, the region is the substring of buffer text between point
> and mark. If the mark is not set, then there is no region.
> (Point always exists, and the mark is normally set early in the
> life of a buffer, and is moved, not unset, thereafter.) Some
> commands operate on this region, copying it, killing it, deleting
> it, or transforming it. [Insert list here if you like.]
>
> In transient mark mode, the region may be active or inactive.
> This is implemented as an internal flag which is set implicitly by
> commands which highlight the region (for example, "shifted motion
> commands"). The flag's value is accessed with `region-active-p'.
> In transient mark mode, commands that operate on the region
> require it to be active, or they signal an error. That is, when
> transient mark mode is on, we say the region is @def{active} when
> region commands are effective. Otherwise, we say the region is
> @def{not active}.
>
> When transient mark mode is off, the region is never highlighted,
> and commands that operate on the region will error only in the
> case that the mark is unset in that buffer, and the region does
> not exist.
IMHO its better to let this up to the programmer/circumstances.
It might be well useful to make user aware of region via highlighting,
preventing accidently killing and the like.
Raised was just the question if the highlighting should be called
´transient-mark-mode' - as there is no transition so far.
Why not introduce `region-highlight-mode' instead?
We also say the region is @def{not active} whenever
> transient mark mode is off.
>
> As a sort of abuse of terminology, it is often said that "the mark
> is active" (resp. "not active"), when what is meant is "the region
> is active" (resp. "not active"). "Inactive" may be used as a
> synonym for "not active".
>
> I'm probably missing or wrong on some details, but as an outline
> something like the above should do.
>
> IMO, a large part of the problem here is confusing the mark with the
> region. If the mark is set, you can always do `(goto-char (mark))' or
> M-x pop-mark, etc. The mark is *not* transient. The region is. But
> I guess it's too late to fix that.
>
> I swear on a stack of Bibles that the above text was written by me, my
> employer has no clue or claim on it, and I hereby contribute it to
> XEmacs (and veto its application since we don't have transient mark
> mode, thank Jamie!) But it's now the FSF's; do with it what you will,
> my papers for XEmacs are on file.
>
>
>
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2009-05-29 10:45 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 33+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2009-05-28 12:29 Documentation of transient-mark-mode is sloppy, wrong, and confused Alan Mackenzie
2009-05-28 16:54 ` Chong Yidong
2009-05-28 20:15 ` Alan Mackenzie
2009-05-28 20:48 ` Chong Yidong
2009-05-28 23:03 ` Alan Mackenzie
2009-05-28 23:53 ` Davis Herring
2009-05-29 11:01 ` Alan Mackenzie
2009-05-29 0:21 ` Chong Yidong
2009-05-29 1:55 ` Stefan Monnier
2009-05-29 4:30 ` Kevin Rodgers
2009-05-29 5:47 ` Andreas Roehler
2009-05-29 8:25 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2009-05-29 8:58 ` Alan Mackenzie
2009-06-01 2:34 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2009-06-01 9:40 ` Lennart Borgman
2009-06-02 6:23 ` Andreas Roehler
2009-06-02 11:50 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2009-05-29 8:37 ` Eli Zaretskii
2009-05-29 9:27 ` Alan Mackenzie
2009-05-29 10:11 ` Eli Zaretskii
2009-05-29 13:13 ` Alan Mackenzie
2009-05-29 14:19 ` Stefan Monnier
2009-05-29 16:40 ` Drew Adams
2009-05-29 22:20 ` Alan Mackenzie
2009-05-30 0:11 ` Drew Adams
2009-05-29 9:55 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2009-05-29 10:14 ` Eli Zaretskii
2009-06-01 2:09 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2009-05-29 10:45 ` Andreas Roehler [this message]
2009-05-29 8:38 ` Eli Zaretskii
2009-05-29 9:35 ` Alan Mackenzie
2009-05-29 9:48 ` Eli Zaretskii
2009-05-29 13:17 ` Alan Mackenzie
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