Re: `isearch-allow-scroll' - a misnomer and a bad design

[Michael Welsh Duggan]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

>     > However, when a control character is special in Isearch and you don't
>     > know it, it will bite you.  You will type it while in an Isearch,
>     > expecting it to have its usual meaning, and it will do something else
>     > instead.
>
>     Do you think the usual meaning of C-u is ``exit the modal thing I'm 
>     doing now''?
>
> Please don't attack straw men.  Emacs normally doesn't even have such
> "modal things" anyway.  What it normally has is major modes that are
> specified in a buffer.
>
> It is not good that we are turning Isearch into something of that
> nature by adding so many commands that are special in it.

Since C-u is always a prefix character, would it make sense to you for
it not to quit isearch if the character that follows a C-u opt/number
prefix is a key sequence that is currently in use by isearch, and for it
to quit Isearch and pass the prefix on to the non-isearch command
otherwise?

In this case, `C-u C-n' would exit isearch and move down 4 lines, whereas
`C-u n' would add four "n"s to the current search string.

-- 
Michael Welsh Duggan
(address@hidden)