bug#1453: 23.0.60; Dead keys do not work in dired and similar modes in Cocoa port

[Wolfgang Lux]

Please write in English if possible, because the Emacs maintainers
usually do not have translators to read other languages for them.

Your bug report will be posted to the emacs-pretest-bug@gnu.org  
mailing list.

Please describe exactly what actions triggered the bug
and the precise symptoms of the bug:

Dired mode binds ~ to dired-flag-backup-files. When one attempts  
entering
~ via the dead-key combination Alt-n (assuming the Alt key is not  
used as
a modifier key and Command is interpreted as Meta key), Emacs first  
reports
an error message "Buffer is read-only: #<buffer ~>" followed by an error
message "Wrong type argument: overlayp, nil" upon the next event.

In an attempt to fix this issue with some other Emacs version, I have  
added
the lines
  (define-key function-key-map [dead-tilde] "~")
  (put 'dead-tilde 'ascii-character ?~)
to .emacs, but these do not help (nor does removing them from .emacs).

Note that with a German keyboard layout, Alt-n is the only way to  
enter a
tilde character. The ASCII tilde is not bound to any key. (Actually, one
could enter ASCII tilde via key combinations Ctrl-Alt-n and Command- 
Alt-n,
respectively, but obviously this does not work for Emacs.)

In GNU Emacs 23.0.60.1 (powerpc-apple-darwin8.11.0, NS apple- 
appkit-824.48)
 of 2008-11-21 on Onyx.local
Windowing system distributor `Apple', version  
97.112.112.108.101.45.97.112.112.107.105.116.45.56.50.52.46.52.56
configured using `configure  '--with-ns''