SL Baur <steve(a)xemacs.org&gt; writes: <rant meta="skippable because followed by real argument later"> So why don't you bind that key to the 'Backspace' keysym then? I think the whole cause of this problem is that X keysyms and the text printed on the keyboard were to close. This caused the "Key above return" to have the keysym "Backspace" on PC style keyboards (FYI almost every Workstation has PC style keyboards now), where it should really have been "delete". However we can not change all that. Effectively what has happened is that the-keysym-that-deletes-backward is now backspace. What needs to happen is for people running older setups to realize this and rebind their "Key above return" of </rant> The problem is: You keyboard seems to be very exceptional so you need to give better bug reports and help a bit to find a better heuristic. So a. how DO you generate 'backspace' on your keyboard? b. On my keyboard (Sun-5) and a nearby Linux machine 'xev' says that the Delete key has an empty Xlookupstring, whereas backspace has an "^H". I am assuming that on your keyboard the 'delete' keysym generates some ascii rubout stuff (either ^? or C-h). Could you chekc with xev? Then we can do something like (defsubst delete-forward-p () (and delete-key-deletes-forward (or (not (eq (device-type) 'x)) (eq 'delete-key-deletes-forward 'force) (and (x-keysym-on-keyboard-sans-modifiers-p 'backspace) (x-keysym-empty-lookup-string-p 'delete))))) It would need somebody to write x-keysym-empty-lookup-string-p or something like that though. I am not even sure it can be done. Windows Telnet. The program that comes with every windows install. Neither C-S-2 nor C-SPC produce anything there. Jan