Re: annoyances which seem to arise from Unicode



Theodore Kilgore wrote:
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?
Have you tried ~/.Xresources? In mine (debian) i have:

!Make Alt-o send ESC-o in mc, instead of "i" with daeresis.
XTerm*eightBitInput: true
XTerm*altSendsEscape: true
XTerm*metaSendsEscape: true



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