Re: Text selection can't be erased by pressing delete

[Xah Lee <xahlee@gmail.com>]

On Aug 20, 5:08 am, Gabriel TEIXEIRA <gabriel_teixe...@sdesigns.eu>
wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I've been working with three simultaneous emacs windows, each one
> containing a diferent project, and I noticed that two of those three are
> presenting a weird behaviour. When I select a text in those windows
> (like by pushing Shift and then the arrow keys), and then I push the key
> Delete, I expect that the selected/highlighted text be erased, but
> instead, it erases a single character to the left of the cursor (like
> would happen without the selection) and the selection disappears
> (although the same operation works with Backspace or Shift+Delete
> normally). It seems that the Delete key is not anymore aware of the text
> selection. It is even more weird the fact that this doesn't happen with
> the window that I opened the last and the other windows that I opened
> after to check the behaviour. I seems that emacs "wears" after some time
> opened. Anyone have any idea of what's this? Is this a bug or I typed
> accidentaly any command that triggers this behaviour?
>
> Thanks in advance
> Gabriel Teixeira

hi, all you need is to turn on the delete-selection-mode

• New Features in Emacs 23
  http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs23_features.html

quote:

     Also, now you can hold down the Shift key then press arrows key
to select text. To turn this off, put:

     (setq shift-select-mode nil) ; “t” for true, “nil” for false

     However, by default, pressing delete key will not delete selected
text. If you want this, put:

     (delete-selection-mode 1) ; make typing override text selection

i don't know if that is on in emacs 24, but maybe give it a try.

note that cua-mode also turns on the typing overwrite behavior, but is
is not done by having delete-selection-mode, it implemented it's own.

also, if your selection is made by mouse, then it will automatically
have delete selection behavior, even if delete-selection-mode is not
on.

it short, the situation is a bit messy.

also, this problem happens to me too, that sometimes for some reason
the delete selection behavior is gone. Quite annoying. When this
happens, i call delete-selection-mode again to turn it back.

 Xah ∑ http://xahlee.org/ ☄