On Windows, pressing Shift+Backspace while in an editor
window will act just like a regular Backspace will,
however under Linux (Gentoo 2006.0 and
Slackware-current), instead of deleting the caracter
before the cursor, it inserts "^B".

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think it'd be too
hard to fix this little annoyance.

(I would do it myself, but I'm not at all familiar with
IDLE's source layout)

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Right now there aren't a lot of IDLE developers.  It would
be great if you could work on a patch.

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Can't fix in IDLE by binding Shift-Key-BackSpace.

Using Python interpreter:

>>> import Tkinter
>>> root = Tkinter.Tk()
>>> text = Tkinter.Text()
>>> text.pack()

and try typing some char followed by
backspace and shift-backspace.

In Tcl shift-backspace works correctly.

Not an IDLE issue, appparently a Tkinter issue.

I've tested this on Linux and on Tk 8.4 I got "\b", and the same
happened with Tkinter. On Linux, again, with Tk 8.5 I got a rectangle
char (something invalid), and this repeated at Tkinter.

This is not a Tkinter issue.

I've just found some discussion about the problem here:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_thread/thread/577df9cfa39e6688/49484ac512f13693?lnk=gst&q=shift+backspace#49484ac512f13693

Hope this is enough to close this issue, as it is not a tkinter neither
idle issue.

I'm closing this as won't fix but let me tell what you can do to solve
the problem yourself (this may be added somewhere else then, like in the
tkinter wiki).

First, check the keysym you get when pressing Shift-BackSpace:

import Tkinter

def show_key(event):
    print event.keysym, event.keycode, hex(event.keysym_num)

root = Tkinter.Tk()
root.bind("<Key>", show_key)

root.mainloop()

While running this I pressed Shift-BackSpace, this is what I got:

Shift_L 50 0xffe1
Terminate_Server 22 0xfed5

You can clearly see that Shift-BackSpace is assigned to something else
here, Terminate_Server. You can confirm this by doing:

$ xmodmap -pk | grep 0xfed5

     22    	0xff08 (BackSpace)	0xfed5 (Terminate_Server)	0xff08
(BackSpace)	0xfed5 (Terminate_Server)	0xff08 (BackSpace)	0xfed5
(Terminate_Server)

The second field in this output indicates that when I press the key 22
(BackSpace) while holding shift, a Terminate_Server is sent. For more
information about xmodmap you should consult its documentation.
Then, to fix the initial problem you can do the following:

$ xmodmap -e "keycode 22 = BackSpace"

But then it may happen that you can no longer issue a Ctrl-Alt-BackSpace
to finalize your X (till you end this session and start another, since
nothing was permanently saved here). To solve this issue I suggest
checking conflicts between xkb and xmodmap.

Just for future reference it is now on
http://tkinter.unpy.net/wiki/Linux_Shift-Backspace