I think everyone knows _my_ opinion on the delete direction madness. The simple fact of the matter is that no, no matter how much you stick your head in the sand and pretend for it to go away, delete DOES NOT MEAN delete backwards to most of the rest of the world. The rest of the world has moved on beyond that simple madness and quite logically does not expect to have TWO keys on ONE keyboard that both delete backwards. I have a longer paper on this that I'd like to finish up (I was planning on trying to make it to Japan to present it but other obligations prevent me from coming) but I'll try to summarize here... The crux of what I'd like to discuss is this... we have to be responsive to the needs of our community. That includes noticing when those needs have changed and does not necessarily mean we need to be "keepers of the flame" and maintain the "old ways" just because that's the way it's always been done. Today's unix users are a hell of a lot different than the unix users of 5, 10, or 20 years ago. Like it or not, the unix users of today are coming from a PC-centric background. People _expect_ that certain behaviors will be there and when they find them they get baffled beyond belief and walk away. When enough of those people walk away, we'll be maintaining XEmacs for a smaller and smaller group of people, all of which are just sitting around in their chairs muttering about the "good old days". Steve... you are a smart man. I find it baffling that you are continuously pissed off about this change when a simple "setq" in your .emacs will remove it forever from your view. Instead, to avoid doing that and to continue to push an agenda you want to force thousands of other users into a baffling maze (to them) before they can figure out how to make something work logically. We can continue to enforce whatever behavior we want... whatever behavior we view "proper"... but just because you _can_ do something does not mean you _should_ do something. XEmacs is remarkable for being flexible, agile, and a living, evolving editing environment. And, whether you want to admit it or not, current thinking about keyboard mappings _has_ moved on and we are no longer keeping up with it. We're dinosaurs, desperately holding on to something just because "we've always done it that way". That doesn't sound like the attitude that has brought us all the other cutting edge features in XEmacs at all. Now, free software authors like to state that they are writing their software for their own satisfaction... that they don't get paid to write it therefore they should be able to write what they please. To a large extent, this is a quite valid assumption. However, any free software author who writes something never really wants to see their software languish unused. We _all_ get paid for what we write... as free software authors, though, our payment comes in the form of recognition. Our currency is, quite simply, how many people use our software. Don't kid yourselves, we _do_ get paid for writing this, albeit in a slightly different fashion. As responsible free software authors, we owe our users and our community due consideration... namely to be responsive to their needs and desires. How can we expect people to continue to use our software when we use it to further our own agendas at their expense? Yes, we have the prerogative. We have the ability. If we write something useful enough, we can unilaterally "correct" any behavior that we deem "undesirable". After all, isn't that what Microsoft does? I say that we stop infighting about this issue. It's dumb, it's divisive, and it's argued about as a religious issue instead of a simple matter of good user interface design. Instead, let's put a poll together. Hell, post it to Usenet or put together a web form or do something. Let's go to our _users_ and perform the unspeakable... let's _ask_ them which they'd prefer. And then let's _all_ agree to be bound by that instead of beating each other over the head. -- Gary F. -- "There is no shame in a UNIX Sysadmin not coping with a Mac. Auto mechanics don't have to fix rubber squeak toys." -- Carl Rigney