Re: Transient Mark Mode on by default

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Yidong!

On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 03:09:48PM -0400, Chong Yidong wrote:
> Sascha Wilde <address@hidden> writes:

> > I liked the philosophy behind the old way better: make the defaults
> > simple and clean and leave it to the user to turn on all the bells,
> > whistles and trautonii he likes.

> Only within reason.  For example, we turn Font Lock mode on by
> default.  Similarly, Transient Mark mode works very well (due to years
> of Emacs hackers turning it on in their own init files), and provides
> a real benefit to new users (direct visual feedback).  If there is any
> subset of Transient Mark mode behavior that people feel is too
> intrusive to be the default, such as commands activate the mark
> unnecesarily, we can always tweak that.

Well, this probably isn't a very constructive thing to say, but it is the
highlighting of the region which most disturbs me.  It is brash, it jumps
out from where you least expect it and shouts "GOT YOU!!!  HAH!!!".  It
is impolite, inconsiderate and self-important.  It is violent.  I cannot
work effectively whilst constantly flinching in fear of this anticipated
copper sulphate coloured attack.

How could it be better for people like me?  Well, highlighting the single
character at the mark rather than the whole region would be a massive
improvement (is this perhaps already available as an option?).
show-paren-mode has this as an option, so why not the highlighting in
transient mark mode too?

The other big irritation is that region-face almost, but not quite,
completely obliterates the font-locking in the region - all that remains
visible is whether the font-lock face was bold or not, the foreground
being forced to white, the background to deep blue.  I don't see there is
much that can be done about this on a 16-colour tty.  But on a 2^24
colour GUI system, it would be nice to have a "mute" attribute in a face,
something that would reduce the saturation of the colour it's applied to.
So that red would become a bit pink, pure blue would move towards sky
blue, white would become light grey, black would become dark grey.  I
don't think such a face attribute exists at the moment.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).