Re: Poll about proposed change in DEL (aka Backspace) and Delete

[MBR <mbr@arlsoft.com>]

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Suvayu,

I don't think so.  What Richard wrote was:

"a change is being considered for ASCII DEL (on most keyboards, the 
Backspace key) and the Delete function key."

ASCII DEL is 0x7F (decimal 127).  As Richard says, on most keyboards 
that's the key whose keycap says "Backspace".  It's usually on the far 
right of the keyboard in the row that contains the digits 1-9 and 0.  He 
also refers to "the Delete function key".  That's the key whose keycap 
says "Delete".  That's usually somewhere near Insert, Home, End, Page 
Up, and Page Dn.

I hardly ever use the Delete function key.  But I use Backspace to 
delete 1 character backward all the time.  I'd guess several times a 
minute.  This change would mess up my typing bigtime!  I'd guess that it 
would be a year or two before I stopped accidentally typing Backspace 
and expecting it to delete 1 character backward.

    Mark


On 10/4/2011 3:33 AM, suvayu ali wrote:
> Hi Mark,
>
> On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 6:28 AM, MBR<mbr@arlsoft.com>  wrote:
>> If I understand the proposal correctly, the idea is to bind the function
>> normally bound to C-w to the BACKSPACE key and the Delete key.  Have I got
>> that right?
>>
>> As things currently stand, there are three different kinds of delete
>> functionality I use: delete 1 character backward, delete 1 character
>> forward, and delete the marked region.  For over 25 years I've been used to
>> those functions being invoked by BACKSPACE, C-d, and C-w respectively.  Yes,
>> I could retrain myself, just as I had to do years ago when IBM put the CTRL
>> key in the wrong place.  But it will inevitably be a big pain.
>>
> I think you are misunderstanding the change. The proposal says if
> there is an active region, pressing the DEL key would delete either
> the active region (if present) or one character forward. You can still
> use C-w instead, the difference being using DEL won't append the text
> to the kill ring but C-w will.
>
> To try out this behaviour, you can use Emacs 24 pretest or the BZR
> head. I hope this clears up the proposal.
>

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