RE: DEL key doesn't kill mouse-dragged region

[Drew Adams]

       Why not just turn on delete-selection-mode and
       transient-mark-mode, by default?

    Certainly not delete-selection-mode.  Its behavior is extremely
    surprising, disturbing and difficult to understand for _real_ newbies
    (newbies to editors, as opposed to experienced MS Windows users).

    Yes, there are still people who are unfamiliar with the MS Windows
    interface.  I am one of them.  But I have taught Math courses that use
    mathematical software to Math Ed students, some of them middle aged
    and with very limited computer knowledge.  I recommend that they use
    Emacs as their editor.  They manage very well.  They do not seem to
    have any of those problems newbies are _supposed_ to have, according
    to the apparently prevailing wisdom on this list.

       The only people to complain will be (some of the) experienced
       users, and they can easily restore the current behavior.

    _Real_ newbies might indeed not complain (at least not on emacs-devel,
    Bug-gnu-emacs or similar lists), but they would suffer.

I usually agree with you Luc, and when I'm not sure I agree, it's usually
because I don't understand the issue well enough. This time I do disagree.

I'm not sure your middle-aged Math Ed students are representative of most
_Real_ newbies to Emacs. I'm guessing that most newcomers are quite young
and have had a lot of access to electronic UIs (for lack of a better word) -
whether it's an iPod or cell-phone screen or a Web browser window. They are
used to point-and-click and drag-select-and-delete.

It's not a question of MS Windows experience; it is the Way Of The Web (and
Even Beyond). Don't you see the same selection and deletion behavior when
you edit an Emacs Wiki page or fill out an HTML form at Source Forge or
GNU.org - regardless of your platform? I don't have any PDA gadgets or a
cell phone, but my guess is that they too behave similarly. This is the
ubiquitous behavior that people are used to.

WRT Stefan's comment about the Delete key (in addition to Backspace): If
Delete has the same behavior as Backspace in general, then perhaps we should
bind them the same in delete-selection-mode.  One of the things I like about
delete-selection-mode, as opposed to PC selection mode, is that it does not
change key bindings. But if people feel most newbies will expect Delete to
act like Backspace wrt deleting the selection (region), then they could be
bound the same (in delsel mode).