Re: AW: delete-selection-mode

[Chad Brown <yandros@MIT.EDU>]

On Mar 18, 2010, at 1:15 AM, David Kastrup wrote:

> And get a bell.  In the course of a normal editing operation.
> 
> We are talking about the beginner setup, remember?  The beginner that
> did not yet customize things (like visible-bell) because he does not
> know how.  The beginner that tries Emacs in an office full of people.
> 
> Not that this beginner will have a clue about C-g anyway: he'll just
> have to figure out a different way to deactivate the region if he is
> ever going to type another character.

The beginner who finds itself with a highlighted region that it doesn't want highlighted will remove it by clicking with the mouse, like they do in every other editing context that they've ever used.  They will get no bell.  

The slightly more advanced beginner who doesn't want to use the mouse will instead use an arrow key, again like they do in every other editing context that they've ever used.  Again, they will get no bell.

Eventually, if we lay out the breadcrumbs well and if their curiosity leads them in that direction, they will discover that emacs can change this interaction, and that removing the convenience of tmm/delsel (and many, many people find that behavior more convenient) opens up the possibility of a more elaborate set of options.  They'll also learn at that time (again assuming that we handle that part of the documentation adequately) that there are middle grounds between the two extremes, and that, as it says on the very first line of description we show people:  ``GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editor—and more.'' -- and then they will decide for themselves.   

*Chad