On Sun, 2012-07-22 at 05:39 -0400, Stefan Monnier wrote:

> > I then move the cursor to the end of the region I want to mark.  I then
> > do something like CTL-w or ALT-w to cut or copy the region.  Sometimes
> > the region gets marked and sometimes it doesn't.  I read through the
> 
> Could you be more specific?  "The region gets marked" means (to me) that
> the region gets highlighted, which should already happen while you "move
> the cursor to the end of the region".  So do you see the region being
> highlighted while you move the "cursor" (which I call point)?  If you
> do, then what is it that really "doesn't work"?
> 
> Try to be super specific since most likely the thing that matters is
> for you an irrelevant detail you don't even notice.
> 
> 
>         Stefan

The region doesn't get highlighted.   When the region gets marked
correctly and then I do an ALT-w for example, the cursor will bounce
back to the the location that was marked with the CTL-spc and then back
to point at the end of the region.  Then if I do a CTL-y, the region I
marked will be yanked and pasted.  When it doesn't work, when I do an
ALT-w, the cursor does not bounce back to the mark.  And then of course
when I do a CTL-y, nothing is yanked back because the mark did not work
properly.

So, what seems to not be working reliably is:
do a CTL-spc to set mark
move the cursor to another location with the mouse by clicking with the
left mouse button
then do CTL-w or ALT-w

at the point of the CTL-w or ALT-w it is like the mark is not set any
more because the cursor does not bounce back to the CTL-spc location

Since I am running Debian, I have set the emacs alternative back to
version 23 and setting the mark always works.

Brent