Re: delete-selection-mode as default

[Robert Pluim]

Clément Pit-Claudel <address@hidden> writes:

> 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".

Neither of those require 'replace selected' behaviour, since you could
easily use M-DEL instead. It could be useful when you need to replace
a word far away from point, although personally Iʼll use isearch to
get there, not the mouse.

> 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.

Agreed.

Robert