Re: delete-selection-mode as default

["Clément Pit-Claudel" <cpitclaudel@gmail.com>]

On 2018-09-07 05:18, hw wrote:
> When a selection is active, why would anyone assume that typing an
> arbitrary letter is supposed to replace the entire selection, or to
> disable it?

Out of experience, mostly.  When almost every other program you use besides Emacs behaves that way, it's easy to assume that Emacs will behave the same way.

> Allowing that to happen is simply a design flaw, or an
> oversight.

I prefer to think of it as a very convenient feature.  For example, as I typed this email, I first wrote "as I composed" instead of "as I typed", pressed Control+Shift+Left Arrow, and pressed "typed".  Similarly, I had first written "I call it" instead of "I prefer to think of it", and the way I changed one into the other was to select "call it" and type "prefer to think of it as".

This select, then type to replace behavior is the norm in most programs I use outside Emacs, and it doesn't sound like a design flaw to me. Of course, Emacs' default behavior can be very convenient too, and it's good that it can do both.