The default value is the issue (was XEmacs 21 /vs./ my keyboard: I want my DEL back)

[ My apologies to anyone who's seeing this a second time -- I don't think it made it to the list when I first sent it -Rick ] From: gfoster(a)suzieq.ml.org (Gary D. Foster) Date: 04 Jan 1999 22:12:38 -0800 Now, after it was out for a while and everyone was (pretty much) satisfied with it, Martin chose to make a single change... to change the _default_ behavior and not the underlying code. But changing the default value is the only part of the whole situation that strikes me as a bad thing. Basically, the only arguments that I've seen for changing the *default* direction of the DEL key can be made equally well for changing the *default* for delete-pending. Adding options for people who want emacs to behave like vi or windoze or anything else seems fine to me. I'd just prefer that by default it behave like emacs. There's a similar discussion going on on the bbdb list where I think that Jamie has made a lot of good points about how arbitrary changes discourage people from upgrading. I think that it will be especially frustrating for anyone who was annoyed enough to take some time to get the backspace/delete situation working when they find out that someone's gone and ``fixed'' it so that it doesn't work again. I'll make it work for me again, whatever it takes, but a good number of people who've already bought into XEmacs, but who don't want get anything out of constantly tuning it, will be turned off. Changing the default behavior in this case is most definitely the wrong thing to do. Rick