Subject: bug#1958: 23.0.60; org-mode does not honour shift-select-mode

From: Carsten Dominik <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2009 20:21:04 +0100

On Jan 20, 2009, at 7:00 PM, Lennart Borgman wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 5:20 PM, Bastien  
> <[email-masked]> wrote:
>> Lennart Borgman <[email-masked]> writes:
>>
>>> On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 2:40 PM, Chong Yidong  
>>> <[email-masked]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I don't think consistency demands that S-arrow perform text  
>>>> selection in
>>>> other major modes.  So, unless you wish to change it, we can  
>>>> leave this
>>>> one alone.
>>>
>>> Once again then: I really prefer consistency. What do you mean with
>>> "other major modes"? I really thought that S-arrow should perform
>>> selection in all major modes since it is a very basic editing  
>>> command.
>>
>> I'm all for consistency as well, but I don't think it implies that
>> S-<arrow> should have exactly the same behavior in any major-mode,
>> or in any editing context.
>>
>> Org-mode distinguishes between several contexts: tables, lists,
>> properties, headline, etc.
>>
>> I think it's reasonable to expect S-<arrow> keys to behave like in
>> any other modes outside of these specific contexts.  For now this is
>> not the case, it returns an error like this:
>>
>> "org-shiftcursor-error: This command is active in special context  
>> like
>> tables, headlines or timestamps"
>>
>> IMHO, getting rid of this error makes Org-mode consistent enough with
>> other modes.
>
> Is not that counter-intuitive? For me it would be fine to use
> S-<arrow> for something else than selecting in a context where
> selecting is not possible at all. But I wonder if there are any such
> contexts in Emacs ...?

I think I have to agree here with Lennart.  If a user expects shifted
cursor motion to do selection, a variable reaction of Emacs depending
on context will be confusing.

For me this issue is that s-cursor commands do very valuable and
intuitive stuff in Org, and these commands are heavily advertised
in the manual and likely used by a large number of active users, who
would also be confused if we suddenly changed this behavior.

In addition to that, Emacs's has alternative methods for
creating a selection that are far superior in my mind.  Setting
the mark and then moving the cursor by any means, in
particular also search ans jumping to the beginning/end
of the buffer - I miss this so much in any program outside Emacs.

I therefore think it is the right decision to have a variable for
setting this and my personal preference would be to let me have my
current default setting in Org-mode which allows me to use these
valuable keys.

After all, it is Emacs 23 that changes its default for these keys
from what we were used to, not Org.

- Carsten