Re: please make line-move-visual nil

[Rupert Swarbrick]

Lennart Borgman <address@hidden> writes:

> On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 11:52 AM, Alan Mackenzie <address@hidden> wrote:
>>
>> I disagree with Eli that defaults are "only" defaults: they're the
>> settings we impose on new users, and are critically important.  If
>> they're bad defaults, they could irritate and exasperate users for
>> months or years before those users eventually change them.  (C-n
>> adding new lines onto the ends of files (which was the default in
>> Emacs <= 20) springs to mind here).
>
> I guess new users will in most cases appreciate the change (since it
> makes Emacs behave more like other editing environments), but old
> timers will a bit more often dislike it.

I agree that this makes Emacs behave more like other editors. But I'm
not sure it's something that new users will feel strongly about: How
much is emacs _really_ "like other editing environments"? I mean, all
the keyboard shortcuts are different. Killing and yanking is very
different from Ctrl-C Ctrl-V. Using multiple buffers gets confusing very
quickly if you're used to the Windows-style MDI etc. etc. etc.

So my point is that making this (rather corner-case) behaviour more like
gedit or notepad isn't necessarily a relevant goal: I don't believe that
it makes much difference to new users, who are learning a significantly
different approach to editing anyway [1].

Now, this post doesn't claim to have any bearing on any of the other
arguments put forward in the discussion. My personal feeling is that
Drew's suggestion of making a distinction between "programming" and
"text" based on major-mode is very sensible.

Hope this makes some sense,

Rupert


[1] Actually, I do have some data here: I'm a Uni student and my
 housemate started using Emacs at my suggestion a couple of months ago
 to run inferior octave processes. When I mentioned this thread to him
 this morning he grinned and said he'd come across the (old) behaviour,
 but decided that it made sense on balance. So far as I know, he didn't
 read any info files or help strings about it, so if it made sense
 without maybe it's not such a bad design!

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