Rick Campbell <rick(a)campbellcentral.org&gt; writes in xemacs-beta(a)xemacs.org: Count me on the side believing the default delete direction change as being a terrible thing. We already have a well-defined delete forward key. It is C-d. It requires less hand motion than the function key and has been in place forever. It's the same and it isn't the same. The case of pending-del is similar to vc. So long as fixing dont-fuck-me-xemacs defaults bloats .emacs only, they have minimal impact outside of the size of .emacs. Defaulting to pending-del loads code whether you wish the feature or not. This is extortion. I firmly believe the user should not be forced to load code despite the fact it will be immediately turned off. There is enough of a difference that I will suffer in silence and fix the deletion bug in my .emacs. But please, please do not turn on the terminally brain damaged pending-del by default. Maybe what we need are styles like CC mode uses. It wouldn't be all that difficult to implement and if getting sensible behavior required (setq xemacs-interface-style 'emacs) in .emacs I could live with that.