Re: Shift selection using interactive spec

[David Kastrup]

"Lennart Borgman (gmail)" <address@hidden> writes:

> David Kastrup wrote:
>> If CUA-mode chooses to provide an additional futzing interface for
>> meddling with external packages, this does not preclude us from using a
>> proper interface within Emacs itself.
>
> David, thanks for the example you provided earlier of how to change
> the interactive form. However to me it looks like this can not be used
> directly. It is too complicated.

Sigh.  I am sick of all those strawmen.  It is not complicated to put an
additional character into an interactive string when appropriate.  If I
state that we already have ways to do ugly things and don't need another
one for that reason alone, that does not mean that I consider those ways
the proper thing to do.

What you are complaining about that there is no simple ad-hoc way to
patch up functions with _separated_ code when they are not actually
prepared to do the right thing.

Such ad-hoc patchery can be done in a manner of ways, starting with
advice over going through the interactive form.

It is easy enough to write and put a _function_ in cua-mode.el, _iff_
such patchery is desired, to perform this patchery and adjust all the
documentation strings appropriately in that process.  Whether or not
this is a complicated operation or not is utterly _irrelevant_: if it is
deemed important, a function doing the job can be provided with an
interface that is _easy_ to the user, regardless of what it does behind
the scenes.

Tacking a property to a symbol is doing a _half-baked_ job, and it is
plainly insane that people suggest C-h f trying to list all properties
on a symbol, on the notion that there might be some crazy undocumented
ad-hoc mechanism somehow interpreting some property on a symbol which
has its function cell set to some function.

This is utterly crazy.  Emacs is supposed to be self-documenting.  We
don't _want_ undocumented side-effects as a way to manipulate something
in the vicinity of a function, in a manner that will easily break
function aliases and other completely natural things.

If people want an easy way to mess with functions _after_ they have been
defined for this purpose, cua-mode can implement a proper function doing
this job.  There is no necessity that this function needs to be simple,
or be called "put".

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum