Re: [Texmacs-dev] Patches: copy/paste and selection handling.

[Norbert Nemec]

Todd Wilson wrote:
> Norbert Nemec wrote:
>   
> > -------- Original-Nachricht --------
> >     
> > > Datum: Thu, 05 Feb 2009 12:59:00 -0800 Von: Daniel Bump
> > > <address@hidden> An: address@hidden CC:
> > > address@hidden Betreff: Re: [Texmacs-dev] Patches: copy/paste
> > > and selection handling.
> > >       
> > > > My question to Emacs-mode users: Should the kill-ring simply be 
> > > > identical with the primary buffer as it is right now or is there
> > > > a need for a separate mechanism?
> > > >         
> > > In emacs the kill-ring contains not only the most recent kill but
> > > previous ones also. In TeXmacs, I don't think more than the most
> > > recent kill is saved. If you want to access an earlier kill, you
> > > have to undo.
> > >       
> > True. The full functionality of a kill-"ring" is not implemented in
> > TeXmacs. Implementing this cleanly would be major surgery, so we will
> > have to do with just one kill-buffer (i.e. TeXmacs primary buffer,
> > aka. X11-clipboard) which is lost when new content is copied or cut.
> >     
>
> That's too bad:  I'd long hoped that the full kill-ring functionality
> would be a part of TeXmacs.
>   
If someone wants to look into this, it should be possible. It is just 
that my resources are extremely limited and emacs-mode is not my 
personal top-priority. I want to make sure that my changes do not 
degrade emacs-mode behavior and am happy to change little details to 
improve it. Otherwise, my focus is on Windows mode which is what I use 
personally.

> > a) In original Emacs, the mark is remembered until it is set in some
> > other location (via ctrl-space). In TeXmacs, the mark is forgotten as
> > soon as any editing command is issued. Does this bother anyone in
> > practice? Do emacs-people usually expect the mark to be remembered
> > through text editing?
> >     
>
> As a user of Emacs for over two decades, and someone who was initially
> drawn to TeXmacs because of its similarity to Emacs, my preference would
> be to have the emacs mode be as close to Emacs as possible, as least
> from the point of view of the interface (the fact that TeXmacs functions
> are named differently from their Emacs counterparts doesn't bother me at
> all).
>   
This is exactly the intention.

> > To fully follow the standard in Windows mode, selected text should be
> > replaced when entering/pasting new text. This would clearly annoy
> > Emacs-mode users, so the behavior should depend on the mode.
> >     
> It wouldn't annoy some Emacs users, for example the ones that use
> delete-selection-mode (or pending-delete-mode in XEmacs).
>   
Following this line would mean that TeXmacs would need to be as 
configurable as Emacs to satisfy every user. I don't think we can 
achieve this. What would you suggest as a general policy? Aim for exact 
emacs *default* behaviour? Or might this actually annoy the majority of 
emacs-users, because nearly every emacs-user has their personalized 
settings and is annoyed when TeXmacs does not offer the same 
personalization option?

Greetings,
Norbert