Re: Selection region and delete

[Juha Nieminen]

Peter Dyballa <Peter_Dyballa@web.de> wrote:

I really appreciate your efforts to help me.

> In an earlier eMail you mentioned:
> 
>>> If I add the line "(setq delete-selection-mode t)" to my .emacs,
>>> then describe-variable says "Its value is t", and if I use nil instead
>>> of t it says it's nil. In none of these cases does the delete key
>>> function properly.
> 
> So you are making your tests with all your customisations
> active. This is real dirty work. Why can't you do yourself a big
> favour and launch GNU Emacs with -Q?

I have done that, but it doesn't make any difference. (I mean with respect
to this problem. Of course all the settings are defaults, but the behavior
with respect to this precise thing doesn't change.)

But just to follow your instructions to the letter, I started Emacs
with -Q and:

> The first command is ??? well, actually you just could mark some text
> in *scratch* buffer! Start with doing so with the mouse. Now press
> some key! What happened to the selected region?

If I select some text with the mouse, then pressing different keys have
different effects:

- Pressing the delete key removes the selected text.
- Pressing the backspace key also removes the selected text.
- Pressing a character key, such as 'a', does *not* replace the selected
  text with 'a', but instead unselects and just adds the 'a' where the
  cursor was, without removing anything.

> Second test: mark a region with the keyboard (C-SPACE presumingly)
> and the press some key! What happened to the selected region? OK,
> again, you can undo and mark again a region with the keyboard. Now
> press BS or C-d. What happened to the selected region?

It makes no difference whether I select text using ctrl-space and then
pressing cursor keys, or just pressing cursor keys with shift. The text
gets selected, but then if I press delete, it just unselects and removes
the character at the cursor (instead of removing the selected text, like
when the region was selected with the mouse). Likewise if I press backspace
it just unselects and then removes the character at the left of the cursor.
In other words, it behaves like no text was selected at all.

I do not understand why selecting a region with the mouse is different from
selecting with the keyboard (either with ctrl-space or shift+cursors).

> So just insert
> 
>        (delete-selection-mode t)
> 
> into the *scratch* buffer. Position the text cursor (point) into the
> word "delete-selection-mode". You can then type C-h v RET and also
> C-h f RET.

If I follow those instructions precisely, it just says "You did not specify
a variable". (If I write "delete-selection-mode" after pressing C-h v then
it gives the help text I mentioned in the earlier post.)

> The last step is to go to the end of the line, right of
> the closing parenthesis. And then press C-j ??? and nothing else!

When I do that, it gives me this:

Debugger entered--Lisp error: (void-function delete-selection-mode)
  (delete-selection-mode t)
  eval((delete-selection-mode t))
  eval-last-sexp-1(t)
  eval-last-sexp(t)
  eval-print-last-sexp()
  call-interactively(eval-print-last-sexp nil nil)

> Or compile GNU Emacs 23.4 from source yourself

I might need to do that...