[lug] Emacs problem

Steve T. maxl at squeep.com
Fri Aug 17 13:06:07 MDT 2001


On Fri, Aug 17, 2001 at 12:13:17PM -0600, David wrote:
> This is beginning to look like a problem that is not in Emacs, but is
> elsewhere.  If so, that is plain wonderful, since this is a Linux list 8-)

And it is!  Doing an ESC-> in my shell results in a loud, obnoxious beep,
as well it should - the fabled M-> results in absolutely nothing, so
the console isn't even catching it.  This explains why X doesn't have
the problem.

The question is, why can the console capture the alt key fine at some points
and not at others?  Next question is.. how in the world do I fix it?
I'm not even sure where to begin (I suspect terminal type might be something
to look at, but I'm not sure).

> Other things that I note are these:
> 
> * you still have not told us when this problem started, and whether
>   there was an associated configuration change

I mentioned a bit ago on the list that it started when I switched from
Debian to Slackware 8.0; I'm using the Xemacs Slackware package that
was provided by an outside contributor, that's bundled seperately
from the main Slackware distribution.  This also explains the fact
that it's not local to XEmacs.

> * it is interesting that you use Xemacs in a console and not in X; you
>   could try GNU emacs and see if that performs differently.  It occurs
>   to me that there could be some bizarre behaviour whereby xemacs
>   refuses to accept certain keystrokes; also that is why the timing
>   issue above is important.

Believe it or not, GNU Emacs had the same problem when I tried it; I assumed
that it was something wrong with GNU, and installed XEmacs, which I'm more
familiar with and also happen to like a bit better.

> * this is suspicious:
> > Hopefully this should clear up any ambiguity; xemacs just isn't catching
> > the keystrokes bound to end-of-buffer for some reason (or, I noticed,
> > beginning-of-buffer).  If I need to give out more information to further
> xemacs is the entity that does the binding between a keystroke that it
> receives and one of its commands.  It does not make sense to say that
> xemacs is not catching keys bound to its commands.  It does point to a
> faulty command - but this is all in conflict with the keys not being
> seen in the first place. 

Sorry about the odd phrasing there; it is just XEmacs not even seeing the
keys, because my terminal isn't catching them.

- Steve
-- 
"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." - Frank Zappa
"If one studies too zealously, he risks losing his pants." - Einstein



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