Re: delete-selection-mode

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Jason Rumney <jasonr@gnu.org> writes:

> Richard Stallman wrote:
>> All else being equal, we would prefer to make each potential user
>> feel more at home with Emacs.  But that does not mean we will
>> make incompatible changes that are bad for existing users.
>> This is a non-starter.
>>   
>
> I don't think that your suggestion is an incompatible change:
>
>  Here's a possible idea: enable delete-selection-mode by default
>  but only after shift-selection and mouse-selection.
>
> Users who are used to the traditional Emacs behaviour get no surprises
> as long as they continue to set the mark in the traditional way.

Setting the region with the mouse has been supported since Emacs 19 at
least.  That's pretty traditional in my book.

Anyway, we don't have a way to enable delete-selection-mode for a subset
of region activations.

While I am in favor of merging shift-selection and mouse-selection
behavior in all respects (in particular with regard to typing DEL) in
order to cut down on different semantics, delete-selection-mode for
"traditional transient-mark-mode" (a bit of an oxymoron since
transient-mark-mode has not been the default until recently) seems to
have quite a different impact than for shift-selection/mouse-selection.

-- 
David Kastrup