bug#39902: 28.0.50; Marking in dired with active region

[Michael Heerdegen]

Juri Linkov <juri@linkov.net> writes:

> A new user option will help in any case.  But before adding it, maybe
> we could try to improve the visual feedback of selection in Dired.

I'd go the other way, because: When a user has set the new option to a
value that reflects his feeling of what is natural, he probably will not
have problems with the standard highlighting.

> Would it be possible to display the whole line (including file name)
> highlighted with the 'region' face, even when point is still before
> the file name?

AFAIU this would be easy - this is how `rectangle-mark-mode's
highlighting is implemented (rect.el):

(add-function :around redisplay-highlight-region-function
              #'rectangle--highlight-for-redisplay)
(add-function :around redisplay-unhighlight-region-function
              #'rectangle--unhighlight-for-redisplay)
(add-function :around region-extract-function
              #'rectangle--extract-region)
(add-function :around region-insert-function
              #'rectangle--insert-region)

I'm not sure if I would want this, though: marking is only thing that
uses the region.  Copying text is another one, for example.  Would the
changed region semantics have an impact on e.g. `kill-ring-save', etc.?


Michael.