Re: line-move-visual never set to nil?

[Chong Yidong <cyd@stupidchicken.com>]

"T. V. Raman" <raman@users.sourceforge.net> writes:

> As reported a few minutes ago, turning off visual-line-mode has
> no effect. The apparent reason being: line-move-visual remains
> set to T and that is what the code in functions next-line and
> previous-line refers to.

Now, line-move-visual is a defcustom.  The question is, whether it
should default to nil or t (even when visual-line-mode is off).  The
current default is t, which is a kind of hybrid model where line-move
uses screen lines but other editing commands use logical lines.

Like Stefan and others, I've found that this setting works pretty well
in practice, for buffers in which there are occasional continued lines.
(When the buffer is full of long lines, turning on visual-line-mode is
more appropriate.)

It's true, though, that this behavior could be confusing, especially for
longtime users of Emacs.  So maybe we ought to make line-move-visual
default to nil, as before, and leave it to advanced users to change it
to t for their own usage.

What's the opinion of others on this list?