bug#11989: mark region unreliable in 24.1

[Brent S. Elmer Ph.D.]

I am a long time emacs user and recently upgraded to 24.1.  One very
annoying bug is that marking a region sometimes works but sometimes
doesn't.  I use CTL-SPC to set the mark for the beginning of the region.
I then move the cursor to the end of the region I want to mark.  I then
do something like CTL-w or ALT-w to cut or copy the region.  Sometimes
the region gets marked and sometimes it doesn't.  I read through the
release notes and see that a lot of the region marking and clipboard
stuff has changed.  I have changed some of the variables to see if I
could get it to work like it did in 23 but nothing seems to make it
reliable.  I think there is a bug in the region handling.  Another place
I noticed the region marking not working is in Python mode.  I mark the
start of a region using CTL-SPC and move the cursor to the end of the
region.  I then go to the Python menu and select shift region
left/right.  Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.  There is some
kind of a bug in the region handling in version 24.1.  Region marking
was always reliable before.

If it makes any difference, here is my setup:
Debian GNU/Linux testing/wheezy 
gnu emacs 24.1+1-1 directly from the Debian repository(unstable branch)