<div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Package: gnome-text-editor</div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Version: 49.0-1</div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br></div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">For lines with leading whitespace, a backspace erases either 1 character or the value set in "Spaces Per Indent", which by default, I think, is 8 (and if it wasn't, I set it to 8 to make it standard and plain). However, each backspace signal should always erase only exactly 1 character.</div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br></div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">The app came pre-installed on my FLX1s phone. I use it to take notes, and sometimes I create tables with it or use it creatively. When I set the Text Editor preferences, I made sure to turn off any automatic features like indentation. I proceeded to edit non-code text. At one point, I was on a line with many spaces, and I wanted to erase some of those spaces, so I held backspace. When the keyboard repeat delay for backspace was met, it began repeatedly backspacing at the configured repeat rate, which was fine, but after a few characters were erased, suddenly, to my surprise, the backspacing appeared to go 8x faster, going further than I had planned before I could react, and erased more text than I was trying to erase.</div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br></div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">I understand that programmers like to make their IDE's do all sorts of tricks, but I just want peace and quiet. When I tap backspace, I always want exactly one backspace to be performed. It may seem more convenient to some people to have backspace be a dynamic tool that erases a different amount of characters depending on context. But how it feels to me, is that i have LOST the ability to backspace 1 character. It feels like someone is playing tricks on me, and I feel like I am no longer in control of the input. And it's a cruel trick indeed, because in my experience, what usually happens is that I have to suffer with the issue as-is for the life of my hardware, which may be years.</div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br></div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">There are situations where there are 8 leading spaces, and what I want to do is erase 1 space, so that there are 7. I don't know if anybody up there will hear me, but I would like my backspace key back.</div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br></div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">I suggest eliminating the tricky dynamic backspace behavior which is specialized for writing code from this simple Text Editor that is packaged and branded as an all-purpose text editor, and shipped with devices for users to use on their phone, which already has enough problems with on-screen keyboards. Alternatively, I suggest creating a new toggle to be able to disable the tricky backspace behavior, and I suggest that the tricky behavior is disabled by default.</div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br></div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Indentation Option:</div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Dynamic backspace (backspace erases indent) OFF / ON</div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br></div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">or simply...</div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br></div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Backspace Un-indents OFF / ON<br></div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br></div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br></div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Whatever language you use, I think it's important to bind the basic behavior to OFF, and the tricky, dynamic backspace behavior to ON.</div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br></div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Whether backspace un-indenting is good for a code editor is one thing, but gnome-text-editor is presented as an all-purpose text editor, which might be used for a wide variety of things.</div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br></div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Also, when I indent, I like to have tab insert 2 spaces, so that is how I would set up the editor, but that doesn't mean I'll be using it for writing code every time.</div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br></div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">P.S. 'Spaces Per Tab' does not behave as expected either. If you set it to 4, with a 'Spaces Per Indent' value of 8, and set the Tab character to spaces, then a Tab inserts 8 spaces, not 4.</div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br></div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><div><br></div><div><span>Text Editor (49.0)</span></div><div><span>GLib: 2.86.3 (2.84.4)</span></div><div><span>GTK: 4.20.3 (4.20.1)</span></div><div><span>GtkSourceView: 5.18.0 (5.17.1)</span></div><div><span>Libadwaita: 1.8.2 (1.8.0)</span></div><div><span>Libspelling: (0.4.9)</span></div><div><br></div><div><span>gtk-theme-name: Adwaita-empty</span></div><div><span>GTK_THEME: unset</span></div><div><span>GdkDisplay: GdkWaylandDisplay</span></div><div><span>DESKTOP_SESSION: missing</span></div><div><br></div><div><span>Documents Directory: /home/furios/Documents</span></div><div><br></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor restore-session = true</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor recolor-window = true</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor show-map = false</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor custom-font = 'Monospace 11'</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor tab-width = uint32 8</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor show-line-numbers = false</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor style-scheme = 'Adwaita'</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor wrap-text = true</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor style-variant = 'follow'</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor indent-style = 'tab'</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor show-right-margin = false</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor spellcheck = false [default=true]</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor auto-indent = false [default=true]</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor use-system-font = true</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor keybindings = 'default'</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor highlight-current-line = false</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor last-save-directory = 'file:///home/user' [default='']</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor auto-save-delay = uint32 3</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor discover-settings = true</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor enable-snippets = false</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor line-height = 1.2</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor indent-width = -1</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor show-grid = false</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor draw-spaces = @as []</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor right-margin-position = uint32 80</span></div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor highlight-matching-brackets = true</span></div><div class="protonmail_quote">
------- Forwarded Message -------<br>
From: sonicbluesky <sonicbluesky@proton.me><br>
Date: On Monday, February 16th, 2026 at 8:12 PM<br>
Subject: text editor backspace doesnt work right<br>
To: submit@bugs.debian.org <submit@bugs.debian.org><br>
<br>
<blockquote class="protonmail_quote" type="cite">
<div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">with 8 spaces that begin a line, and my cursor right after, a backspace deletes all 8 characters, instead of just 1.</div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br></div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">it seems someone thought it would be cool to have that behavior, but i do not think it is cool. i have all the automatic settings i could find turned off. i want my backspace key to backspace one character, as expected.</div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br></div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br></div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span>Text Editor (49.0)</span><div><br></div><div><span>GLib: 2.86.3 (2.84.4)</span></div><div><span>GTK: 4.20.3 (4.20.1)</span></div><div><span>GtkSourceView: 5.18.0 (5.17.1)</span></div><div><span>Libadwaita: 1.8.2 (1.8.0)</span></div><div><span>Libspelling: (0.4.9)</span></div><div><br></div><div><span>gtk-theme-name: Adwaita-empty</span></div><div><span>GTK_THEME: unset</span></div><div><span>GdkDisplay: GdkWaylandDisplay</span></div><div><span>DESKTOP_SESSION: missing</span></div><div><br></div><div><span>Documents Directory: /home/furios/Documents</span></div><div><br></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor restore-session = true</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor recolor-window = true</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor show-map = false</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor custom-font = 'Monospace 11'</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor tab-width = uint32 8</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor show-line-numbers = false</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor style-scheme = 'Adwaita'</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor wrap-text = true</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor style-variant = 'follow'</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor indent-style = 'tab'</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor show-right-margin = false</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor spellcheck = false [default=true]</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor auto-indent = false [default=true]</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor use-system-font = true</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor keybindings = 'default'</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor highlight-current-line = false</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor last-save-directory = 'file:///home/user' [default='']</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor auto-save-delay = uint32 3</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor discover-settings = true</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor enable-snippets = false</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor line-height = 1.2</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor indent-width = -1</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor show-grid = false</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor draw-spaces = @as []</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor right-margin-position = uint32 80</span></div><div><span>org.gnome.TextEditor highlight-matching-brackets = true</span></div><div><br></div><span></span></div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br></div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br></div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br></div><div style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br></div>
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