Re: Emacs highlighted region expanding with scrollbar movement

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2014 15:38:48 +0100
> From: Andreas Röhler <andreas.roehler@easy-emacs.de>
> 
> Am 22.02.2014 12:46, schrieb Raimund Steger:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I've only recently upgraded to Emacs 24 (GNU Emacs 24.3.1 
> > (i386-pc-solaris2.11, Motif Version 2.1.0)). Before, I used Emacs 22 for 
> > the most part, but also Emacs 23
> > (briefly) in some environments.
> >
> > I noticed that apparently starting with Emacs 23, the highlighted region 
> > behaves differently when dragging the scrollbar handle with the mouse. As 
> > the highlighted region
> > moves out of the visible area of the window, the highlighting is suddenly 
> > expanded to follow the point. This means it is not possible anymore to 
> > leave something highlighted
> > and pan around in the file at the same time.
> >
> > I have transient-mark-mode turned off, but changing its value does not 
> > change the described behavior. Also, it is reproducible with 'emacs -Q' and 
> > seems to happen for GTK
> > builds as well.
> >
> > Is there some way to turn this off? Or am I missing something here?
> >
> > Thanks a lot,
> > Raimund
> >
> >
> >
> 
> May confirm this behavior with Emacs 24.3.50.1. of 2013-07-06

That's true, but I also see the same behavior in Emacs 22.1, so I'm
not sure what change in behavior is being reported here.  I don't
think this changed at all, and couldn't (see below).

> I.e. if region-end is expected to be scrolled downward out of sight, cursor 
> will remain at first line and thus expanding the region.

Indeed: Emacs always moves point to keep it on display, so the region
is expanded as well.

> Would suggest a feature request, which would mean: no visible cursor 
> displayed in this case.

You are actually asking for a much more significant change: to be able
to move point out if sight.  There is some infrastructure for this in
Emacs (see the window-vscroll function, for example), but user-level
commands always force point to move to keep it on display.  This has
always been central to Emacs UI design.