Re: [LUG] Emacs alt/meta key not working in fvwm [SOLVED]

On Mon, Feb 8, 2016 at 6:20 PM, Roland Tarver <roland.tarver@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Mon, Feb 8, 2016 at 6:09 PM, Gordon Henderson <gordon+lug@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mon, 8 Feb 2016, Roland Tarver wrote:

Hi Folks,

This is probably really simple, but thus far I'm beat...

I have recently started using fvwm as my window manager. I use emacs from
an xterm on my debian system.

Of-course, you could always use vi(m) ...

hahahah! Thank you Gordon :-p

http://cube-drone.com/media/orig/198.png

Best wishes
Roly

Hello (again)!,

After about 4 hours of searching / learning I think I might have actually fixed it. Turns out that it is a dead simple thing, as suspected.

The xterm program has an option "metaSendsEscape" which needs to be set to "true"!! GRRRRR!!! 4 hours! lol.

The best way I have found of doing this is adding the following line to a ~/.Xresources file. I had to create this file and it now just contains a single line....

XTerm*metaSendsEscape: true

.... and that's it!

Alternatively, it is possible to set this option when starting a new xterm...

$ xterm -xrm "*metaSendsEscape: true" -xrm "*eightBitInput: true"Â &

The eightBitInput option is related to this problem, although I am unable to fully explain how. I get the correct results without setting it to true, but I guess if it is not working for you, then this is something to try. See man page and links below for further info.

The only bad thing about the xterm command above is that the changes only persist for the life of that particular xterm - hence using the ~/.Xresources file to make changes persist.

Just in case it saves someone 4 hours of their life, I have posted all of the main links I have been reading below; then hopefully someone will stumble across our mail archive and it will be like a mini xmas! haha!

###########Â links for xterm Meta key problem ##########

# The KEY to the solution
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xterm#Fix_the_.27Alt.27_key

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=38403
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/X_resources#Parsing_.Xresources
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xinitrc

# Pass command line options to an xterm.
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-557067-view-next.html?sid=bef3b8ceab210ea\
919d1eff047abd799

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=444250

www.x.org/releases/X11R7.6/doc/xorg-docs/input/XKB-Config.html

http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses.faq.html#bash_meta_mode

http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/28993/what-is-bashs-meta-key

http://www.x.org/archive/current/doc/man/man1/xmodmap.1.xhtml

http://www.x.org/archive/X11R7.7/doc/man/man1/xev.1.xhtml

http://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.6/doc/xorg-docs/input/XKB-Config.html

Using setxkbmap command to set keyboard layout.
http://betabug.ch/blogs/ch-athens/1242/
########################################################

Best wishes

Sore-brain Roly! :-)