Re: Is transient-mark-mode for newbies?

[Barry Margolin]

In article <1192109562.973390.221400@g4g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>,
 weber <hugows@gmail.com> wrote:

> Or, in other words, are there commands or tricks possible only when
> transient-mark-mode is off?
> Regards,
> weber

I've been using various versions of Emacs for over 25 years.  I just 
last week enabled transient-mark-mode.  I decided that I like the way 
that many commands will automatically switch from operating on the 
entire buffer to just the region when it's visible.

Also, I just installed TSUCHIYA Masatoshi's shell-command.el, mainly for 
its feature of enabling completion in the M-! and M-| prompts.  But it 
extends the above automatic behavior to M-|, a command I use very 
frequently.  If the region isn't visible, M-| automatically operates on 
the entire buffer, saving me from having to type C-x h over and over.

BTW, your question appears to presume that t-m-m was created to emulate 
Windows/Mac-style marking with the mouse.  In fact, it goes back to the 
ZMACS editor on the MIT Lisp Machines, which was written around 1980.  
GNU Emacs didn't have this originally because it was designed for text 
terminals, and highlighting the region on the fly was difficult on many 
types of terminals; it wasn't until it was adapted to window systems 
that this style could be resurrected with no overhead.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
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