The tricky part is the handling of the C-x and C-c keys which are normally used as prefix keys for most of emacs' built-in commands. With CUA-mode they still do!!! Only when the region is currently active (and highlighted since transient-mark-mode is used), the C-x and C-c keys will work as CUA keys, i.e. cut and copy, but when the region is not active, C-x and C-c works as ordinary emacs prefix k