[davelnewton]

The delete the character "before" the cursor; I'm not sure I understand the question. RTL languages still have forward and back, they're just RTL: it's still a backspace.

Re the larger question: historical. Never seen anybody with anything like it.

I'm not sure I'd use it very much; usually my mistakes are things I've just typed.

When they're not, I have to put my cursor near the error anyway, and if I'm doing that, I either put it in the right spot to backspace, or I'm performing larger-than-single-character-scale edits anyway).