RE: change \C-m binding to newline-and-indent

-----Original Message----- From: owner-xemacs-beta(a)xemacs.org [mailto:owner-xemacs-beta＠xemacs.org]On Behalf Of Geoffrey Furnish Sent: Thursday, April 01, 1999 9:17 AM To: Colin Rafferty Cc: XEmacs Beta List Subject: RE: change \C-m binding to newline-and-indent Colin Rafferty writes: > This is a major change, so I thought it would be better to throw this > out to the list, rather than just submitting a patch. > > For the last umpteen years, I have had the following two lines in .emacs: > > (global-set-key [(return)] 'newline-and-indent) > (global-set-key [(linefeed)] 'newline) > > I cannot understand anyone who does not also have this. It does the > right thing everywhere. In source buffers, it indents properly. In > non-source buffers, it indents properly (i.e. not at all). > > Of all the people that I have shown this to, only one has not changed > his bindings to match. There seems to me no reason why we should not > make this the default. > > I imagine that somewhere in the dark past, there was no function > `newline-and-indent', and that is why we still don't bind it to > <return> by default. > > I propose that we make a change for the better. We should change one > of the most used keys on the keyboard to a smarter and more functional > binding. > > Does anyone disagree? I don't consider it adviseable. The issue is the potential for surprise and frustration. If a new user edits some file with an extension which just happens to throw the buffer into some foreign mode that he doesn't understand, and things work differently in that mode, and he doesn't know how to "make it act sane", it can be extremely frustrating. Popularizing the mod you suggest by putting some suggestive comment in sample.emacs, seems more well advised to me. Personally, I just hit C-j whenever I'm in a programming mode. One reason this makes sense is because of commenting. Some programming modes have some wierd "comment gravity" behavior (sorry I don't know the proper name for this curiously adictive bizardom), where a comment will be auto indented, but to different places depending on where you were when you started it. If you hit C-j, and you drop to the reindent column, and start typing a comment it may stay there, move right, move left, etc. If you hit return, to go to leftmost column of next row, and start typing a comment, it might stay there, which might be a different location than in the preceding scenario. If that's what you want, having "return" not go there, is maddening. IMO, it is easier for the eclectic to learn to customize, than for the novice to learn to uncustomize. Spoken as one who is better than novice and poorer than eclectic. -- Geoffrey Furnish Actel Corporation furnish(a)actel.com Senior Staff Engineer 955 East Arques Ave voice: 408-522-7528 Placement & Routing Sunnyvale, CA 94086-4533 fax: 408-328-2303