Emacs on Aix questions

Emacs on Aix questions

[Hemond, Steve]

Hi friends,

I have installed Emacs (21.3.3) on Aix and I have some questions before
going ahead and make it available to my users.

First, while in X11 mode, I have two main problems :

1. The DEL key won't erase from the point position. It acts like
BACKSPACE. (I don't have this problem in terminal mode). 2. C-space will
start setting a mark, but moving the cursor to select a range leads to
nothing. Like the MARK SET is disabling soon after.

In terminal mode (emacs -nw), I have the same MARK SET problem. The DEL
key behaves correctly. But I have a problem:

1. The mode line disapears from time to time (often when paging up and
down) like its not refreshed. Is it possible to fix that?

General question :

1. Is is possible to tell emacs not to use backup and temporary files? I
hate listing a directory filled with #file and file~ files, and I don't
really need to backup this way. Can I get rid of that feature easily?

Thanks a lot for your support,

Best regards,

Steve Hemond
Programmeur Analyste / Analyst Programmer
Smurfit-Stone, Ressources Forestieres
La Tuque, P.Q.
Tel.: (819) 676-8100 X2833
shemond@smurfit.com 

Re: Emacs on Aix questions

[leo]

"Hemond, Steve" <SHEMOND@SMURFIT.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.2129.1076349584.928.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org...

> 1. The DEL key won't erase from the point position. It acts like
> BACKSPACE. (I don't have this problem in terminal mode).

you can change your key bindings: with C-H c DEL lookup what the DEL key is
for the system and what command it invokes.

then put something like
(global-set-key "[C-z" 'shell)

2. C-space will
> start setting a mark, but moving the cursor to select a range leads to
> nothing. Like the MARK SET is disabling soon after.
>
> In terminal mode (emacs -nw), I have the same MARK SET problem. The DEL
> key behaves correctly. But I have a problem:
>
> 1. The mode line disapears from time to time (often when paging up and
> down) like its not refreshed. Is it possible to fix that?
>
> General question :
>
> 1. Is is possible to tell emacs not to use backup and temporary files? I
> hate listing a directory filled with #file and file~ files, and I don't
> really need to backup this way. Can I get rid of that feature easily?
>
> Thanks a lot for your support,
>
> Best regards,
>
> Steve Hemond
> Programmeur Analyste / Analyst Programmer
> Smurfit-Stone, Ressources Forestieres
> La Tuque, P.Q.
> Tel.: (819) 676-8100 X2833
> shemond@smurfit.com
>
>

Re: Emacs on Aix questions

[leo]

sorry, i guess a fragmented version of this post hit the group a couple of
minutes earlier...

"Hemond, Steve" <SHEMOND@SMURFIT.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.2129.1076349584.928.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org...

> 1. The DEL key won't erase from the point position. It acts like
> BACKSPACE. (I don't have this problem in terminal mode).

you can change your key bindings: with C-h c DEL-key lookup what's the name
of the DEL-key
for the system porabbaly "C-d" and what command it invokes (probably
delete-backward-char)

then put something like

(global-set-key "\C-d" 'delete-char)

in your .emacs file.

> 2. C-space will start setting a mark, but moving the cursor to select a
range leads to
> nothing. Like the MARK SET is disabling soon after.

try to experiment with M-x toggle-transient-mark-mode. that might help.

cheers, leo

Re: Emacs on Aix questions

[Stefan Monnier]

> 1. The DEL key won't erase from the point position. It acts like
> BACKSPACE. (I don't have this problem in terminal mode).

Take a look at normal-erase-is-backspace-mode.
If you know how Emacs could automatically detect this case on AIX, please
send us patch.

> 2. C-space will start setting a mark, but moving the cursor to select
> a range leads to nothing. Like the MARK SET is disabling soon after.

Take a look at transient-mark-mode.

> 1. The mode line disapears from time to time (often when paging up and
> down) like its not refreshed. Is it possible to fix that?

This is probably a slight disgreement betwen your terminal and its
description in the terminfo/termcap database (although it might also be
a bug in Emacs, of course).  So we need much more info about the terminal
you're using, the setting of your TERM envvar, and maybe also the
termcap/terminfo of that TERM setting.

> 1. Is is possible to tell emacs not to use backup and temporary files? I
> hate listing a directory filled with #file and file~ files, and I don't
> really need to backup this way. Can I get rid of that feature easily?

For auto-save files (i.e. #..#), see auto-save-default.
For backup files, see make-backup-files.
I hate my dirs to get dirty, so I turned off make-backup-files, but I still
kept auto-save-default because those files disappear as soon as you save
your buffer, so they are rare.


        Stefan

Re: Emacs on Aix questions

[Martin Jost]

"Hemond, Steve" <SHEMOND@SMURFIT.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:mailman.2129.1076349584.928.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org...
1. Is is possible to tell emacs not to use backup and temporary files? I
hate listing a directory filled with #file and file~ files, and I don't
really need to backup this way. Can I get rid of that feature easily?

>From the emacs-info file (node "Backup Files")
   For most files, the variable `make-backup-files' determines whether
to make backup files.  On most operating systems, its default value is
`t', so that Emacs does write backup files.

so a 
(setq make-backup-files nil)
in your .emacs should (mostly) "fix" the ~-part.
(mostly because of the "For most files,..." in the info-text.

>From the emacs-info file (node "Controlling Auto-Saving")
   Each time you visit a file, auto-saving is turned on for that file's
buffer if the variable `auto-save-default' is non-`nil' (but not in
batch mode; *note Entering Emacs::).  The default for this variable is
`t', so auto-saving is the usual practice for file-visiting buffers.

so a 
(setq auto-save-default  nil)
in your .emacs should "fix" the #-part.

HTH

Martin

Sorry for the late reply, my newsreader didn't want to post at first try...