Re: delete-selection-mode

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Dan Nicolaescu <dann@ics.uci.edu> writes:

> Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:
>
>   > > All thinks considered, IMHO the present behavior, where delete-selection
>   > > is off, is a better default.
>   > 
>   > Agreed.  In my message I referred to using a form of
>   > delete-selection-mode, but that's a very limited form of it: it only
>   > applies to `yank'.  I like it because it allows me to do C-M-SPC C-y to
>   > replace an argument.
>
> How about we do a user poll about this?  
> That seems to be a better way of deciding a default for such a very
> visible feature.

It is sort of a popular democratic sickness that people think they are
achieving anything by choosing between two existing bad things instead
of improving either one.

With the current semantics of active regions and delete-selection-mode,
I consider the end result painful.  That does not change that it may
also be in some cases be useful.

Polling users and/or setting the default means one gives up on the idea
to have something that is useful while not being painful.

Does really nobody have an idea how to improve the situation?  Maybe
generalize mouse-deletion-mode (or what it is called) somewhat: I think
that I could tolerate an active region being deleted by typing DEL.

Now that transient-mark-mode is the default and that mouse-marking makes
an active region anyway, this might make for a more consistent user
interface without being too much of an annoyance.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum