Re: Deleting broken in Python, or why delete-key-deletes-forward sucks
Glynn Clements <glynn(a)sensei.co.uk> writes:
Hrvoje Niksic wrote:
> The Python electric deleting feature is totally broken wrt
> `delete-key-deletes-forward'. I have `delete-key-deletes-forward',
> but my backspace key generates delete, and I have no backspace key on
> my keyboard.
If your backspace key generates delete, and you have no backspace
key on your keyboard (by which I presume that you mean that no key
generates the Backspace keysym), isn't setting
delete-key-deletes-forward to t a bad idea?
I hoped you wouldn't ask this. The short answer is: no, it's not a
bad idea at all.
Long answer: when designing `delete-key-deletes-forward', one of the
more important design goal was for it to be safe to set it to t, no
matter what, and have the underlying mechanism do the right thing.
One of the reasons reasons I refuse to have backspace generate delete
is to catch bugs of this sort.
If the problem is with t being the default, then maybe the default
should be changed from t to something which checks the value of
(x-keysym-on-keyboard-p 'backspace) under X.
No, the default value of t is exactly right. If everything is coded
correctly (like c-mode is), everything will work, even with multiple
consoles.