Re: delete-selection-mode as default

[hw]

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.

It's not my experience because when I want a selection deleted, I delete
it.  If it gets deleted otherwise, that's a mistake or maybe even a bug
when no undo is available.

>> 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.

I call it a design flaw because if whoever made it this way had given
any thought to it, it would at least be customizable --- and, as said,
because when I want a selection deleted or to be unselected, I delete it
or unselect it, and having a selection randomly disappear like by tying
letters means making a mistake worse.  Software supporting users in
making mistakes and making the mistakes even worse suffers from design
flaws unless doing so is the very purpose of the software.

I suspect that one important reason for the dangerous and careless
dealing with selections you find in many other programs is that the
developers couldn't be bothered to find a better way.

The behaviour is inconsistant, too: insert a frame into a text document
with Libreoffice, keep the frame selected and type something.  Surprise!
This obviously hasn't been thought through, and the behaviour LO shows
here is a design flaw.

> Of course, Emacs' default behavior can be very convenient too,
> and it's good that it can do both.

right

Maybe the default should be changed, as well as Alt-left and Alt-right
should go backward and forward in info history.  But then Emacs would
default to supporting users in making mistakes and make them worse.