Re: Emacs doesn't set mark with C-<SPC> anymore after Xubuntu upgrade to 14.04

[Timothée Flutre]

Thanks everyone for your advice!

I created another user on my system but the same behavior happened (that
is, C-<SPC>) doesn't set the mark.

My problem was in fact due to IBus. I did the same as explained in this
answer (
https://ask.fedoraproject.org/en/question/10978/emacs-key-binding-ctrlspace-not-working-on-fedora-16-gnome-or-xfce/?answer=14990#post-id-14990).
I first opened IBus ($ ibus-setup) and there I changed Ctrl<space> into
Alt<space>. I hope it won't destroy anything, but at least C-<SPC> now sets
the mark in emacs.

Timothée Flutre


2014-05-22 1:18 GMT+02:00 Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com>:

> Timothée Flutre wrote:
> > To investigate this, I opened a terminal (xfce4-terminal 0.6.3), launched
> > emacs inside it (emacs -nw), wrote a few dummy lines in *scratch* and
> > ...
> > On StackOverflow, I learned that C-<SPC> was not working likely due to
> the
> > fact that the terminal emulator wasn't properly transmitting C-<SPC> to
> > emacs (http://stackoverflow.com/a/16271042/597069).
>
> I installed xfce4-terminal 0.6.3 on my Debian system.  I launched it.
> I started emacs within it just as you have indicated.  For me C-SPC
> works fine and I can set the mark using it.
>
> This leads me to believe that for some reason your xfce4-terminal does
> something different that is problematic for you.  I don't know the
> answer but I would concentrate on the question of why your
> xfce4-terminal does not pass C-SPC through as C-@.
>
>   C-h c
>   Describe key (or click or menu item):
>   C-spacebar
>   C-@ runs the command set-mark-command
>
> Therefore I conclude that your xfce4-terminal should be doing the same
> but does not.
>
> There are many ways things might fail and therefore hard to
> immediately diagnose why it isn't working.  I would try another
> terminal emulator and see if it functions better.  I would try looking
> at xmodmap to see if you have a customization that is remapping the
> keyboard.  I would try xev to verify that control is sending Control_L
> and that spacebar is sending a "space".  I would see if there is an
> XFCE customization that might be affecting things.
>
> I might try temporarily creating a pristine new user "guest42" or some
> such and log in there just to verify the behavior with a pristine new
> environment.  If it works there then you have confirmed that the
> problem is in your normal environment somewhere.  You can delete the
> temporary user account after you have completed testing with it.
>
> I am sure there are many ways to debug this problem.
>
> Bob
>