annoyances which seem to arise from Unicode

[Theodore Kilgore <kilgota banach math auburn edu>]

I wrote in some time ago about the problem of some key bindings not 
working properly in an xterm. Namely, the Cntrl and Alt key behavior 
changes from what it is in the terminal. The Alt key bindings for MC cease 
to work and instead are used to print funny characters on the command 
line, and one has to use Cntrl instead of Alt. Thus, as one example, Alt-s 
for search down the directory listing now prints a Hungarian long "o" 
(single stroke on top of the "o") and one has to use Cntrl-s instead. 
Alt-o for "other panel" now prints some other funny character. Cntrl-o has 
the behavior which ought to be done by Alt-o, and the normal behavior of 
Cntrl-o (send MC into the background) is inoperative.
There are partial cures for this, of course. It is possible to create a 
file called .Xdefaults and put into that file the single line
XTerm*metaSendsEscape:  true

and the problem is cured, in part.

By "in part" I mean exactly that an ordinary user now can use MC in a 
normal manner in the xterm.
There are however two difficulties which remain, and perhaps someone knows 
a way to overcome them:
1. If one is doing any real business, such as running a compiler to 
install something, then one has to do something like open a window and run 
"su" and become root in that window. After one has done this, the 
.Xresources entry becomes inoperative in that window, and the described 
uncooperative behavior takes over again.
1 a. One might think that, well, root also should have a copy of the 
.Xdefaults file. So to anticipate this suggestion let me point out right 
now that it does not help. To be sure, it will help if one starts X as 
root, but not if one has started X as a user and then has opened an xterm 
and switched over to be root in that xterm. In this event, the root user's 
copy of the .Xdefaults file is obviously either not read, or is 
inoperative.
2. If one has two machines (for example, home and office) and has the same 
userid on both and if one does something like ssh (other machine), then 
again the .Xdefaults file is ignored. Again, it does not matter if one has 
a copy of the .Xdefaults file, with identical contents, on both machines. 
Clearly, it does not get read when one makes a connection in from the 
outside, using ssh.
Any suggestions?

Theodore Kilgore