Re: Mac terminal.app: starting emacs, possibly as sudo

[Perry Smith <pedzsan@gmail.com>]

Marius,

On Oct 17, 2011, at 5:36 AM, Peter Dyballa wrote:

> 
> Am 17.10.2011 um 09:37 schrieb Marius Hofert:
> 
>> Oh, and something else: Instead of adding /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin/emacs to PATH (before /usr/bin), can't one just remove /usr/bin/emacs and create a link to /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin/emacs?
>> There are also emacs-undumped and emacsclient in /usr/bin, not sure what they are for, though.
> 
> I wouldn't try to destroy the system. (But you're not me!)

I would agree with Peter.  I try to not modify "Apple" stuff but find ways to work around it.  I have no idea of some weird script somewhere uses Apple's stock emacs.  The other obstacle is at some point, Apple will update the system, install a new emacs, and you will lose your changes.

As far as the keyboard: you are now going through two layers.  When you type a key, the Terminal is interpreting that keystroke.  I am sure that is slightly customizable but how much, I don't know.  Then Terminal sends it to emacs as a sequence of keys.  I believe you have most the modifiers at that point.  Here is an example: with the GUI emacs, when you hold the control key down and hit an "a", emacs knows that entire sequence of key strokes.  But when emacs is running inside Terminal, Terminal knows and sees the whole key sequence but sends just a Control-A to emacs.  There will be a few dramatic impacts and probably a few subtle ones too.

So, in particular, how the "chord" keys work, option, command, control, and shift (and also left and right shift, left and right command, etc) is controlled more by Terminal than it is by emacs.  I hope all that makes sense.

Good luck,
pedz