Do WindowManagers mess mc key-bindings?

[chris glur <crglur gmail com>]

 I'm going to mention this important but little realised observation and query
before I explain my main/simpler query.

mc which started with DOS:nc has survived and grown for decades because
it facilitates the data/noun approach to computing.

The data-centric view is more flexible than the action/verb/app view
favoured by beginners, who would use a monster browser-news-mail
application to do all their 'work'.   And if it's got pdf processing 'linked
in' the trying-to-be-universal-app can handle pdf too.
But what about fax or sound or ....

`mc` allows returning to the older, more universal approach, where you've
got all the data for a project in the filing-cabinet: mail, manuals,
fax, photos,
newsThreads, the squashed beetle and blood samples in a sealed bottle, ...

So project-N is not married to the current popular monster-app.
That critical fax and email reply, which you'll need in 20 years time, is saved
as bytes in a file.  Bytes will be here for generations to come, after the
current 'app' is dead.

So the superior way to arrange your projects is by-directory, not by
application.
And `mc` is THE superior tool to manage your projects per-directory.

BUT !! Since heavy-duty users are likely to have multiple projects open at
any time [that's how life is - you've got to handle new stuff that arrives
randomly and unplanned], you'd need multiple `mc` open: 1 [at least]
per current project.  So when that random phone-call or idea arrives
for project-N, how do you find if/where an mc is already opened for
that project, and possibly even wth the appropriate file opened for
editing at the appropriate place for the newly arrived item?

We need something like descriptive book-marks.

<F2> / X : append to the book-mark-file, the paths of both panels, and
have the user
enter the <location>, so that:
3,4=  /mnt/p11/home/fish     /mnt/p6/legal/FidDuty
   means that if an item arrives for project 'fish', a mc for it is available at
desktop3, terminal4.

But now here's my point about not getting married to apps:
when I used kde & cxfe [or what ever] it numbered the terminals, but BlackBox
doesn't.  So "3,4" is no good, except that you need search in WS3 only.

Obviously, somewhere in the PC it's known if/where a mc is open with one of
its panels at 'fish'. But where/how?  Not being able to index to the relevant
mc, drastically reduces the utility of mc.
--------------------
ver3 < kde is an intolerable bloated monster, and xfce is disappointing too,
so I'm using BlackBox. But it masks/changes the special keys.
Eg. Alt/Enter does NOT copy the selected fileID to the command line,
 it DOES, <move the cursor up through existing screen text>.

Can mc fix this, or must I complain to BlackBox?

Thanks,

== Chris Glur.