Subject: Re: bug#62892: proposal to extend mark-sexp to go forward and backward on command

From: Zachary Kanfer <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 21 May 2023 01:46:21 -0400

I think I've made as good an argument as I'm going to. It basically boils
down to:

* if the keys are bound, it's quicker to call mark-foo-forward and then
mark-foo-backward than to call mark-foo, then exchange-point-and-mark, then
mark-foo again.
* This behavior is simpler and more predictable: mark-foo-forward always
marks forward. mark-foo sometimes marks forward and sometimes backwards.
The complexity of the various mark-foo functions can be seen in how many
cases the docstring has. The behavior of the mark-foo-forward,
mark-foo-backward functions can be gathered from the name, without reading
the docstrings.

I understand we have different opinions, so if this isn't convincing, I'll
bow out here. Thanks.

On Thu, May 18, 2023 at 2:52 AM Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]> wrote:

> > Cc: Ruijie Yu <[email-masked]>, Stefan Monnier <
> [email-masked]>,
> >  "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>, Juri Linkov <
> [email-masked]>
> > From: Zachary Kanfer <[email-masked]>
> > Date: Wed, 17 May 2023 23:17:01 -0400
> >
> > Is there anything I can do to make this patch easier to evaluate? As far
> as I'm aware, I've addressed
> > all comments that have been made in this thread.
>
> My POV is still as it was before: I'm not sure we should add these new
> commands, since the existing commands already provide this
> functionality, if you use "C-x C-x" to switch the direction.
>
> I've seen nothing in the discussion which made me change my mind.  Did
> I overlook some convincing arguments?
>