Re: C-d deleting region considered harmful

[Christoph <cschol2112@googlemail.com>]

On 9/18/2010 12:40 PM, Miles Bader wrote:

> I press C-d to delete the character after the cursor -- the command is
> called "delete-forward-char" after all.

In 23.2 you use C-d to delete the character UNDER the cursor. Unless you 
have a different definition of cursor than I do.

delete-forward-char does not make much sense to me either. From the 
documentation the only difference to delete-char is said behavior or 
killing the active region. Technically, it's a delete backwards.

I do like the behavior though.

> It's not uncommon to have the region be activated somewhat
> inadvertently;

I usually activate the region to perform some kind of a command on it. 
If I decide that I need to delete the character under the cursor instead 
of deleting to entire region, is it too strange to hit C-g first, to 
deactivate the region and then press C-d to delete the character? That 
seems like a pretty normal workflow to me. Unless you are expecting 
implicit behavior like deactivating the region before deleting the 
character. As an Emacs user of 2 years (not 200) I wouldn't necessarily 
expect implicit (or traditional) behavior like that. ;)

> Moreover, adding this new functionality to DEL/backspace has
> undeniable utility, because many many mac/windows users have that
> particular usage hardwired into their fingers.  This is _not_ true of
> C-d.

Absolutely true. C-d, to me, is a convenient alias for the <delete> key, 
which on most keyboards is inefficiently out of reach. Every single 
Windows application that I just pulled up from Explorer, to Firefox, 
Chrome, Open Office or whichever, behaves the same: pressing <delete> on 
selected text deletes the entire selection. That, of course, does not 
mean Emacs must do the same, but just serves as an example that there is 
many many users who would expect this to work like they are used to.

Christoph