Re: inconsistent bindings of backspace and delete between X and xterm

[Dale Hagglund]

"Eli Zaretskii" <eliz@elta.co.il> writes:

> This is wrong: the <delete> key should not be mapped to DEL.  It
> should be mapped to C-d, and thus run `delete-char', like it does in
> xterm.
>
> What OS is that?  Does it help to experiment with
> normal-erase-is-backspace-mode? . . . .  Did you also use the
> --no-site-file switch?  If not, can you use it in addition to -q and
> see if that changes anything?

The behaviour is the same with --no-site-file.  To give a bit more
information, I'm running my own build of 21.3 with no customizations
under redhat 9 with linux kenel 2.4.20.  I just checked the officially
installed emacs, 21.2, and it appears to behave the same way.

When I enable normal-erase-is-backspace-mode, things work as you say.
However, mapping <delete> to C-d still leaves a minor inconsistency
between <delete> and M-<delete>: the former deletes characters
forward, and the still deletes words backwards.

Something else that may be worth mentioning: I'm running all these
emacses inside a vncserver session.  I noticed in the description of
normal-erase-is-backspace, it says that it's default setting depends
on the keyboard.  Perhaps the vncserver's virtual keyboard isn't quite
responding as emacs expects?

Dale.