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Proposed delete behavior changes in Emacs
- gcv 15y agoMy response to the poll: * I oppose the proposed change of deleting the entire region on a single delete command. * I feel fairly strongly about this (4 on a 1-5 scale). * I have been using Emacs for 15 years. This behavior is unhelpful for three reasons. First, unless transient-mark-mode is turned on, it is often not obvious that an active region exists in Emacs. I can press C-SPC and then forget that I did so and move the cursor. In that case, pressing delete will trash the unhighlighted active region, which will surprise and irritate me. Second, Emacs already has a default keybinding for killing the active region: C-w. Emacs users learn this shortcut quickly and it becomes second nature. There is no missing functionality for removing the contents of a region in Emacs. Third, existing Emacs users have muscle memory for the default behavior. Most of us have learned to switch from Emacs to native-OS behaviors during text editing. There is no need to break a behavior we internalized about the way Emacs works. I also strongly oppose the "further change" about inserting characters deleting the active region. PS: These changes may be acceptable if they are limited to transient-mark-mode, but even so, I am not entirely convinced.