[OS X Emacs] Re: Select all: how to *not* jump to the beginning of the file + how to not change the selection?

[Win Treese]

On Sep 21, 2011, at 5:56 PM, Jack Repenning wrote:

> On Sep 21, 2011, at 12:58 AM, Hofert Jan Marius wrote:
> 
>> I can't be that hard. In textmate it is just Command + A to select all without moving and in many modern editors it is not much more complicated either.
> 
> In "Textmate and all modern editors," yes indeed, the selection is distinct from the current insertion point. But in this sense, Emacs is not "modern." The "selection is point-to-mark" behavior has been how Emacs worked since birth, around 1976, long long before there were any "modern editors." 
> 
>> As a newbie to emacs, I get quite confused by all these many keys to hit and although being easier in the long run, having to type that much seems complicated.
> 
> Well, again ... Emacs is kind of a time machine: it's 1976! There are no menus or mice, no colored highlights on-screen, no multi-window bitmap displays. There's just you and your green-phosphor 80x24 ;-)

You had green phosphor? We wrote code on terminals that had black pixels! On a black background!

 - Win