[ESS] ... when editing R documents, 'delete' key behaves as 'backspace'

[Sebastian P. Luque]

On Wed, 3 Dec 2008 14:48:00 +0100,
Martin Maechler <maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch> wrote:

> Hi Seb,
>>>>>> "SebL" == Sebastian P Luque <spluque at gmail.com> on Mon, 01 Dec
>>>>>> 2008 17:26:32 -0600 writes:

[...]

> *DEVELOPMENT* version ..  This is not yet released!

> We still have an outstanding bug report "catastrophic ESS behavior in
> Rnw-mode" and now this one ...

Right, I'm using the ess Debian sid (upstream SVN) package that Dirk
Eddelbuettel kindly provides.  Haven't yet used Rnw-mode with this
version, but the <delete> key issue is certainly not catastrophic! :-)
One can just do the standard 'C-d' to delete forward in the meantime.


SebL> I see inconsistent behaviour of the <delete> key.  In ESS mode,
SebL> this key calls `backward-delete-char-untabify', but in inferior
SebL> ESS mode it calls `delete-char' (i.e. forward deletion).  It used
SebL> to do the latter in both cases in my system (GNU Emacs 23.0.60.1
SebL> (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.12.11) of 2008-11-29 on
SebL> elegiac, modified by Debian).  I can't see the relevant change in
SebL> the docs.  What has happened on this front?

> Well, IIRC, we had responded to one bug report on this topic, and had
> only seen "improved behavior" after the fix, but my memory may be
> completely wrong.

Maybe you mean the thread I followed up to?


> Note that Emacs 23.0.60.1 is definitely a development version, if
> that's the only one that shows the problem you see, it does not yet
> mean that there's a bug in ESS, it (probably) just means there's a
> bug...

The problem is also there with the released GNU Emacs 22.2.1
(x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, X toolkit, Xaw3d scroll bars) of 2008-11-09 on
excelsior, modified by Debian.

I'll try to track this down in the source when I have a chance, so any
pointers as to where to look would help.


Cheers,

-- 
Seb