Re: line-move-visual

[Tim X]

Uday S Reddy <uDOTsDOTreddy@cs.bham.ac.uk> writes:

> On 6/12/2010 5:18 AM, Tim X wrote:
>
>> Your arguments all suggest an environment where interfaces never change.
>> This just doesn't exist and never has. Frequently improvements and new
>> functionality require changes to existing interfaces, both programming
>> and user.
>
> That is not quite true.  In the OS & network protocols world, things can never
> change essentially.  We still live with the possibility of 7bit mail transport
> even though nobody knows for sure whether there are any 7bit mail transport
> systems anywhere.  New protocols are designed that work around the limitations
> of the old protocols.  It has taken Unix some 15 years to figure out how to
> retrofit Unicode into its byte-oriented view of the world.  Things get messy
> but that is the price we pay for backward-compatibility.
>

I don't disagree, but the mere fact new protocols are developed to
handle the new as well as theold is in itself a change in the interface.
Citing an example that shows no interface change doesn't really counter
the arguement, but citing one that has changed would seem to. 

> In the Emacs world, we don't need to go that far.  But there is no reason why
> we can't expect the stability of the basic editing operations.

I agree it is important to keep stability in basic editing operations
and I agree the choice to make visual line mode the default was probably
a mistake. However, I disagree with the arguemment that all the
stability has been lost. If the new feature could not be disabled, then
I would agree. However, the fact you can revert back to the old 'stable'
behavior with only a minimal configuration means you can have exactly
the same behavior and stability as before. What is really at issue isn't
the change as much as making the chang ethe default behavior.

Tim

-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au