Re: line-move-visual

[Mark Crispin]

On Fri, 4 Jun 2010, Uday S Reddy posted:
> Having used Emacs for some 30 years myself, I always expect a few surprises 
> with a new major version of Emacs.

Why should users expect surprises?

> It takes me a few months to read through 
> all the change logs and the new manual sections to become comfortable with 
> all the new and changed features.

Why should users - who presumably have work to do - be obliged to do this?

> Sometimes when there are significant new 
> features, the old version just stays, because several users are uncomfortable 
> with the new version.   The good thing about free software is that you can do 
> that!

Until there is some support issue with the old version, such as a major 
security bug, and the software developers refuse to fix it - "update that 
ancient version you stupid idiot."

> Reading through the emacs-developers list yesterday,

It's nice that you have time to do that.

> I also discovered that 
> there is an Options -> Customize -> New Options menu

I turned off that stupid menu years ago.  I need every screen line.  I 
want to use emacs, not MS Word.

> As I said before, the line-move-visual setting has been a complex decision 
> for the developers.

And they screwed it up.

This is getting ridiculous.  My .emacs file is getting bigger and bigger, 
not to do any customizations but rather [1] to restore behaviors that some 
arrogant and irresponsible software developer decided to change; and [2] 
so that emacs on the dozens of machines I routinely use works the same on 
each and every one of them for the very basic command set that I use.

It does no good whatsoever to tell me that I should get used to the 
change.  Other machines don't have that change.  Some are still in emacs 
18.  Others are bleeding edge.

I should not have to customize emacs so that CTRL/A, CTRL/E, CTRL/N, and 
CTRL/P continue to work the way they've done since the mid-1970s.

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.