Re: Change default behavior of some commands that act on region?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> Cc: "emacs-devel@gnu.org" <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
> Date: Sat, 22 May 2021 10:03:07 -0400
> 
> > There are some commands, such as `downcase-region',
> > that act on the region regardless of whether it's
> > active.  Because `transient-mark-mode' has been on by
> > default for quite a while now, and because there are
> > few such commands, users can wonder what's going on.
> 
> I see two sub-issues to this:
> 
> 1- Breaking long-standing behavior.  I'll let others figure out how to
>    minimize this (e.g. by testing for `transient-mark-mode` or something).
> 
> 2- If we take a step back, I think we'll see there's a "better optimum"
>    in this area when `transient-mark-mode` is in use.  E.g. we could
>    combine `downcase-word` and `downcase-region` into a single command
>    which will do either of the two depending on `use-region-p`.

To remind us, this was triggered by someone's mistaken keypress.  I
don't think we should use such mistakes to justify significant changes
in long-established behavior.  I can easily come up with other
examples where mistakenly holding, e.g., the Ctrl key makes an
absolute mess of my editing (e.g., 's' becomes C-s, and the rest of
what I type more-or-less disappears into the void).  That doesn't mean
we should make over-reaching changes to save me from myself.  That way
lies madness, IMO.  We should stop before it's too late.