In Redhat Linux 5.2 in a Pentium, both backspace and delete act as a delete key. That is, both keys delete the character to the right of the cursor, rather than the backspace key deleting the character to the left of the cursor. I haven't modified the keymaps under X at all... this behaviour seemed to occur straight out of the box. (I gave the bug high priority because it's even annoying me as I type this bug report into Bugzilla! :) Thanks for looking into this bug! Sincerely, John Karcz
I was unable to replicate this problem on a fresh install of 5.2 using Netscape-Communicator-4.07-1.
It's not just a Netscape "problem"; in fact, it's not an application-based problem at all. It X11's key mapping. Put this in a file (e.g., ~/.xmodmap): keycode 107 = Delete keycode 22 = BackSpace and run `xmodmap ~/.xmodmap`, or `xmodmap -e 'keycode 107 = Delete'`, and so on. It should fix the problem (depending on which keyboard you defined in XF86Config, and what keyboard you're using, etc). If it works, you may wish to run it from ~/.xinitrc or similar. While you're at it, you might want to check out "xkeycaps" (do a netsearch for it, or http://www.jwz.org/), if you wish to have an easier, more intuitive way to remap keys. I hope this helps!