🚀 go-pugleaf

The answer to this whole issue seems to be that there's no one right
answer.  Perhaps an option variable would be appropriate.

Assuming we get a variant of overwrite mode where quoted-insert overwrites,
would it be correct for it to overwrite just one character?  If I type C-q
C-a, the resulting character displays as "^A", so maybe it should overwrite
two characters.  And if I type C-q 200, the result is "\200", so it should
presumably replace four characters.

But maybe not.  These representations of non-printing characters are only
used within Emacs and a few other utilities.  If you print the files out
the alignment of columns will be wrong, since different control characters
have different effects on output.

This makes me wonder why anyone would use quoted-insert in overwrite mode
in the first place.

My personal complaint about overwrite-mode is the behavior of deletion
commands.  I think they should overwrite whatever they're deleting with
spaces, so that the position of text beyond them isn't affected.  Actually,
what I'd really like is for it to know what used to be there and restore
it.  I often use overwrite-mode for filling in forms that have rows of
underlines, and it would be nice if editing the fields would fill back in
the underlines.

But I'd be satisfied if it just filled in with spaces.

-- 
Barry Margolin
System Manager, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com          {uunet,harvard}!think!barmar