Re: ESC DEL generates ESC C-d

[Eli Zaretskii]

On 2 Dec 2001, Daniel Ortmann wrote:

> >> On a FreeBSD-stable system under X, ESC DEL now generates ESC C-d
> 
> > That's the expected and correct behavior: Emacs by default remaps DEL
> > into C-d.  If you type "C-h l" (that's a letter ell, not a digit one),
> > you will see that Emacs did receive DEL.
> 
> > For more details, see the node "Deletion" in the Emacs manual.
> 
> This same version of emacs generates ESC DEL on the Solaris system at
> work.

Probably because Emacs on Solaris thinks that there's only one erasure
key, and it maps it to DEL.  What is the value of
normal-erase-is-backspace on each one of these two systems?

> Furthermore, note these two lines from C-h m performed in a dired-x
> mode buffer:
> 
> ESC C-d         dired-tree-down
> ESC DEL         dired-unmark-all-files
> 
> If ESC DEL is always mapped into ESC C-d then how could both of these
> functions be invoked?

Try ESC BS; on the machine where ESC DEL produces ESC C-d, ESC BS
should produce ESC DEL.  (BS is the Backspace key.)

Yes, I know this is a bit of a mess, but Emacs cannot do much better,
given that different keyboards have different keys to erase text
called by different names.  The Emacs manual tries to explain this
complex issue in the nodes "Deletion" and "DEL Does Not Delete".

> ESC DEL may indeed be remapped to ESC C-d in most locations, but it
> appears incorrect for it to be done in a dired-x buffer.

Given that ESC BS produces ESC DEL (it does for me), do you still
think there is a problem?  If you do, please tell what problem do you
see.