Subject: bug#6909: transient-mark-mode

From: Alan Mackenzie <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2010 18:10:36 +0000

Hi, Marco

On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 12:58:53PM +0000, Marco Bisetto wrote:
> Hi all,

> This is not a bug, it's a wrong feature:

Agreed

> - transient-mark-mode on by default is a bad idea

Agreed emphatically.

> - transient-mark-mode is a bad idea per se: you must press more keys and
>   waste energy for no reason

Yes, indeed.

> - Active Region Highlighting is nonsense if you use rectangles such as in
>   C-x r t

Wouldn't know, since I've never used "Active Region Highlighting".

> - Active Region Highlighting is a pain if you change your mind and no more
>   want to act on the region you just marked

I'm sure you're right.

> * transient-mark-mode off by default is a possible workaround to this bad
>   situation where everybody must set it to nil in the configuration file

Be thankful that there _is_ a workaround.

> Bye.

There's a history here.  About 2 or 3 years ago, there was long,
acrimonious, and bitter (don't slag me off for tautology :-) debate on
the Emacs developers' mailing list about making transient-mark-mode
enabled by default.  Every point you've raised (and quite a lot you
haven't) was fiercely fought over.  In the end, the maintainers of Emacs
decided to leave the misfeature in.

Apparently, there are quite a lot of people who actually like t-m-m; I
can't imagine why.

I predict that, rather sadly, your bug report will be shoved to one side
and not acted upon.  Nobody, not even me, wants to reopen the matter for
more argument.

Thanks indeed, though, for taking the trouble to submit this bug report.

> --
> Marco Bisetto

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).