9

I installed Ubuntu 10.04, and with it came Emacs 23. If I want to select text in Emacs, that works perfectly fine except the fact that the region is not highlighted.

However, this only happens, if I try to make a region using the keyboard. If I select something with the mouse, it is highlighted as usual.

Does anybody know, why the region is not highlighted and how to fix that?

Georg Fritzsche
  • 97,545
  • 26
  • 194
  • 236
phimuemue
  • 34,669
  • 9
  • 84
  • 115

1 Answers1

14

Is the option 'Options->Active Region Highlighting' set?

You may want to set

(transient-mark-mode t)

in ~/.emacs or other init files as well.

Dirk Eddelbuettel
  • 360,940
  • 56
  • 644
  • 725
  • It's weird: 'Options->Active Region Highlightning' was set, so I clicked it away. I'm no Emacs (and not at all an Emacs List) expert, but after inserting the line `(transient-mark-mode)` into my `~/.emacs`, it worked. Do you know, what's happening there? – phimuemue Apr 30 '10 at 20:53
  • I have been using that toggle in my `~/.emacs` for this reason for many years -- the manual documents it just fine. I use the interactive options less, so maybe 'Active Region Highlighting' tickles something else. – Dirk Eddelbuettel Apr 30 '10 at 21:02
  • BTW, temporary-transient-mark-mode is much better than transient-mark-mode. This lets you setup a transient mark by pressing C-SPC C-SPC instead of just C-SPC. Much less intrusive. (Oh, and it's on by default, so no config required.) – jrockway May 02 '10 at 05:30