Many beginning users find Emacs difficult to use because its user
interface is different in many ways. Emacs predates most UI
standards, and experienced Emacs users are used to the way things are,
so changing the defaults is difficult. Most of the “standard”
behavior can be approximated in Emacs after some configuring though.
3.9.1 Highlighting the selection
Emacs has a concept of a mark and point that is similar to selections
in other programs. But the mark in Emacs is used for more than just
defining the selected region, it lives on while you continue to edit
and move around the buffer so it can also be a kind of bookmark. The
history of marks is saved so you can pop previous marks back to the
top of the stack to go back to somewhere you were some time ago.
Because of this dual purpose, the region between mark and point is not
highlighted by default unless you select a region by clicking and
dragging the mouse.
The minor mode transient-mark-mode changes the behavior of
the mark in two ways. First, it distinguishes between an active mark
that has just been defined or reactivated, and an inactive mark. When
the mark is active, some commands that normally act on lines, words,
buffers etc. will instead act on the region. An inactive mark needs
to be reactivated to operate on it, unless mark-even-if-inactive
is set. Secondly, transient-mark-mode also highlights the
region when it is active, providing the same visual clue that you get
in other programs.
In addition to seeing the highlighting, new Emacs users often expect
editing commands to replace the region when it is active. This behavior
can be obtained with delete-selection-mode , but see the following
question also.
3.9.2 Standard Windows key bindings
The keybindings of Emacs predate modern GUIs, and the keys that were
chosen by later GUIs for cut and copy were given important functions
as extended keymaps in Emacs. CUA mode attempts to let both bindings
co-exist by defining C-x and C-c as kill-region and
copy-region-as-kill when the region is active, and letting
them have their normal Emacs bindings when the region is not active.
Many people find this to be an acceptable compromise. CUA mode also
defines a number of other keys (C-v, Shift selection), and can be turned
on from the Options menu.
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