Re: Another Emacs incompatibilty

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

> Mark a region, immediately press e.g. "A".  The region is zapped and
> replaced by an A.
>
> That used to insert an A at the insert point since TECO emacs until a
> few releases back.

Still does for me in a vanilla Emacs.  Maybe it's something in your config?

>   In any case, whenever a backward-incompatible change happens, there's
>   usually a way, called out in NEWS, to get back old behavior.
> How about keeping the accepted interface and document in NEWS how to
> make it work in a new, incompatible way?

That's what we do for most new features.  But sometimes the annoyance
for N users of having to disable a "feature" is eclipsed by the expected
benefit for M users getting this new "feature" without having to figure
that they want it nor how to get it.

For any change to Emacs (new feature, change to defaults, bug fix, you
name it), one can easily come up with some scenario where the change
results in an undesired result [ the credibility/likelihood of the
scenario may vary widely, of course ].  So the only really safe way to
avoid introducing new problems is to leave the code 100% unchanged.


        Stefan