Re: Turn off selection coloring

[John A Pershing Jr <pershing@alum.mit.edu>]

Keep in mind that there is *always* a region, defined as the stuff
between point and mark (both of which are always defined).  The
difference here is whether the region is considered to be "active" or
not, with this "activeness" causing a few commands to modify their
behavior.

Transient mark mode has also been around for quite a while; it
determines whether certain mark-setting commands (e.g., C-SPC, C-x h)
also set the region "active" or not.  Before the current release,
transient mark mode was off by default, and many of us were completely
unaware of "active regions" or their implications.  If one wanted an
active region, you could use C-SPC C-SPC to temporarily turn on
"activeness" for the current region, or you could enable transient mark
mode in your .emacs file.

The colorization is orthogonal to transient mark mode: it indicates that
you have an active region, either automagically (because you are running
in transient mark mode) or explicitly (via C-SPC C-SPC).  It is probably
a bad idea to suppress this colorization; I would guess that you would
want *some* indication that you are dealing with an active region
(rather than an ordinary region).

If the colorized region is (1) new to you and (2) annoying, then you
probably want to turn off transient mark mode in your .emacs file, since
you have been surviving just fine the past past N years without ever
using an active region.  However, as more and more commands start paying
attention to the activeness of the region and modifying their behavior,
you may (or may not...) want to "get with the program" and start
figuring out what active regions can do for you!

  -jp