Re: Munging of del and backspace
On Fri, Apr 11, 2003 at 06:49:22PM +0200, Mikael Hedin wrote:
> When I run xemacs, and type C-h k Delete, it talks about the DEL key.
> On C-h k Backspace, it talks about the BS key.
>
> When I run emacs and type C-h k Delete, it talks about C-d, and C-h k
> Backspace talks about DEL.
>
> They both do the right thing when deleting chars in a text.
>
> But why is emacs f**ing with the keysyms? If I try to map DEL to a
> command, I have to press backspace in emacs!
The reason you are confused is because you (apparently) think that `DEL' and
`Delete' are the same thing; they are not. `DEL' is the ASCII DEL character,
which since time immemorial has meant delete-backward-char in emacs.
`Delete' is a labelled key on (some) keyboards, which usually means
delete-char.
So you can think of `DEL' as the emacs abstraction for whatever key happens
to delete the previous character on your keyboard, be it labelled BS, <--, or
Rubout. Because emacs maintains this abstraction, your emacs keybindings
should work on any device.
-Miles
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