Subject: bug#988: cursor runs over prompt in minibuffer; suggestion on default

From: xah lee <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:42:15 -0700

Suggestion: I think that cursor shouldn't run over prompt by default.  
This behavior is basically universal today.

Here's a newsgroup gnu.emacs.help post that prompted me to file this  
as a “bug”:

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Davin Pearson asked:

When I execute M-x find-file it says Find File: Why I press cursor  
left a few times and then try to press a key, it says: "Text is read  
only".  Surely a more natural behavour would be to beep and not allow  
the user to type in that character in the first place.  What gives?

Daniel Pittman wrote:
A:
    M-x customize-variable <RET> minibuffer-prompt-properties <RET>
    Enable the "Don't Enter" option and save your changes

Thanks a lot!

When i switched to emacs in about 2006 from 4 years of xemacs, i was  
quite annoyed by this behavior. I remember i posted this question, i  
got some silly responses from emacs regulars in comp.emacs, who says  
that something to the effect that “sometimes you need to copy the  
prompt”.

in my opinion, is this one of the usability problem.

   Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

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