Re: kill ring menu

[Miles Bader]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:
>   That is why I put it on M-y, which has no use if not preceeded by C-y.
> 
> Using M-y would be convenient, I agree.  However, it might be a
> nuisance for people who type it by accident.  I do that from time to
> time.  Right now I just get an error message when I do that; the
> nuisance would be to get this menu instead.

I think it would be very easy to accidentally get the menu.  You usually
use the M-y command in a series (to move through the kill-ring), and
it's not uncommon to mistype it if you're really using `ESC y' and
accidentally hit another key in between two M-ys.  Getting the error
message in such a circumstance is a little annoying, but being popped
into a new buffer would drive me nuts.  That seems like too high a
penalty for a common typo.

It also just seems a little odd to have the radically different behavior
depending on whether it followed C-y or not, and it seems like it would
make M-y kind of hard to explain -- I still think of it as a separate
command, even if it's only really useful following C-y.

So, I'm against putting this mode on M-y.

BTW, why not make M-y do something reasonable if invoked without a
preceeding C-y?  I've always thought it would be handy if it would do
the equivalent of `C-w C-y M-y' in that situation -- i.e., replace the
current region with the first thing in the kill ring (and then you
could type further `M-y's to continue down the ring).

Note that doing that would make recovering from a `M-y typo' much more
pleasant; what I usually do in that situation to restart the M-y
sequence is `C-w C-y M-y'...

-Miles
-- 
P.S.  All information contained in the above letter is false,
      for reasons of military security.