Re: Shift-movement selection

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

>>>>> "Richard" == Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>> AFAICS, such an approach would make deselection much less likely to work
>> consistently:  the way it's _supposed_ to work is that any pretty much
>> any command except for the special shifted versions should cause
>> deactivation -- and in emacs that's pretty much _every command_.
>> So to make it work "correctly", you need to modify all commands in
>> emacs!  [yikes!]

>     Most commands already deactivate the mark.  So which ones would be left?
>     Do they matter?

> Ordinary Emacs cursor motion commands such as C-f should not normally
> deactivate the mark.  That would be a painfully incompatible change.

The part of the discussion you clipped said:

>>> (defun activate-on-shift-selecting-movement ()
>>>   (if (this-command-keys-are-shifted-p)
>>>       (progn
>>>         (setq shift-selecting-movement t)
>>>         (unless mark-active (set-mark)))
>>>     (when shift-selecting-movement
>>>       (setq shift-selecting-movement nil)
>>>       (when mark-active (deactivate-mark)))))
>>> 
>>> and then call it from wherever it's considered useful
>>> (e.g. forward-char, next-line, ...).

so cursor motion commands such as C-f would still not normally
deactivate the mark, except when the mark was activated by
a shifted key.  This is the desired behavior.  CUA implements it, and
pc-select was "recently" changed to do the same.


        Stefan