on keyboard behavior in emacs -nw

on keyboard behavior in emacs -nw

[Harry Putnam]

I see the phenomena in several recent installs of debian stable and 1
of testing.

In emacs -nw M-x, instead of giving the familiar `M-x' prompt it
inserts a tiny char in the buffer that looks something like a tiny
planet with with a ring around on forward leaning angle.

In fact M+<many-keys> many letters and other char create letters with
various accents or the like:

M-x = ø
M-a = á
M-q = ñ

Foreign (to an english speaker) language letters with accents and
etc.

Any one know what causes this?

Wrong keyboard settings? ... I did run dpkg-reconfigure console-setup
But just got the prompt back after a moment or two...

I did run dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration
And:
  /etc/default/keyboard shows
  
  # KEYBOARD CONFIGURATION FILE
  # Consult the keyboard(5) manual page.
  XKBMODEL="pc104"
  XKBLAYOUT="us"
  XKBVARIANT=""
  XKBOPTIONS="terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp"
  BACKSPACE="guess"

Restarted keyboard service but nothing changed.

echo $LANG shows:
en_US.UTF-8

echo $LC_COLLATE is just blank

It must be some kind of env setting, but what and how to fix?

Re: on keyboard behavior in emacs -nw

[Ben Bacarisse]

Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com> writes:

> I see the phenomena in several recent installs of debian stable and 1
> of testing.
>
> In emacs -nw M-x, instead of giving the familiar `M-x' prompt it
> inserts a tiny char in the buffer that looks something like a tiny
> planet with with a ring around on forward leaning angle.
>
> In fact M+<many-keys> many letters and other char create letters with
> various accents or the like:
>
> M-x = ø
> M-a = á
> M-q = ñ

Do ESC x and so on work as expected?  What does C-h k M-x
(i.e. describe-key) say?

> Foreign (to an english speaker) language letters with accents and
> etc.
>
> Any one know what causes this?

My first thought was that Alt and AltGr had been swapped but then
AltGr-x is not usually ø.

<snip>
-- 
Ben.

Re: on keyboard behavior in emacs -nw

[Héctor Lahoz]

Harry Putnam wrote:
> I see the phenomena in several recent installs of debian stable and 1
> of testing.
> 
> In emacs -nw M-x, instead of giving the familiar `M-x' prompt it
> inserts a tiny char in the buffer that looks something like a tiny
> planet with with a ring around on forward leaning angle.
> 
> In fact M+<many-keys> many letters and other char create letters with
> various accents or the like:
> 
> M-x = ø
> M-a = á
> M-q = ñ
> 
> Foreign (to an english speaker) language letters with accents and
> etc.
> 
> Any one know what causes this?

Don't know exactly. It depends on the terminal you're using.
For example, this is seen in XTerm. If you use XTerm, you can
solve that by toggling the option "Meta sends escape" which you
can reach by C-down-Mouse-1 (Ctrl + left button).

Re: on keyboard behavior in emacs -nw

[Bob Proulx]

Héctor Lahoz wrote:
> Harry Putnam wrote:
> > In fact M+<many-keys> many letters and other char create letters with
> > various accents or the like:
> > 
> > M-x = ø
> > M-a = á
> > M-q = ñ
> 
> Don't know exactly. It depends on the terminal you're using.
> For example, this is seen in XTerm. If you use XTerm, you can
> solve that by toggling the option "Meta sends escape" which you
> can reach by C-down-Mouse-1 (Ctrl + left button).

That is what I do.  I run emacs in Xterm with the following Xresources set.

  XTerm*metaSendsEscape:true

Bob

Re: on keyboard behavior in emacs -nw

[Emanuel Berg]

Bob Proulx wrote:

>> Don't know exactly. It depends on the
>> terminal you're using. For example, this is
>> seen in XTerm. If you use XTerm, you can
>> solve that by toggling the option "Meta
>> sends escape" which you can reach by
>> C-down-Mouse-1 (Ctrl + left button).
>
> That is what I do. I run emacs in Xterm with
> the following Xresources set.
>
>   XTerm*metaSendsEscape:true

Yup. In ~/.Xresources, and then

    xrdb ~/.Xresources

in ~/.xinitrc

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: on keyboard behavior in emacs -nw

[Harry Putnam]

Héctor Lahoz <hectorlahoz@gmail.com> writes:


[...]

>> In emacs -nw M-x, instead of giving the familiar `M-x' prompt it
>> inserts a tiny char in the buffer that looks something like a tiny
>> planet with with a ring around on forward leaning angle.
>> 
>> In fact M+<many-keys> many letters and other char create letters with
>> various accents or the like:
>> 
>> M-x = ø
>> M-a = á
>> M-q = ñ
>> 

[...]

>> Any one know what causes this?

> Don't know exactly. It depends on the terminal you're using.
> For example, this is seen in XTerm. If you use XTerm, you can
> solve that by toggling the option "Meta sends escape" which you
> can reach by C-down-Mouse-1 (Ctrl + left button).

Thanks Héctor

-------       -------       ---=---       -------       -------

Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com> writes:

[...]

>
> That is what I do.  I run emacs in Xterm with the following Xresources set.
>
>   XTerm*metaSendsEscape:true

Thanks Bob

Thanks to all responders. I see what I've done now.
I recently updated debian from `jessie' to (debian 9) `stretch'

I did the upgrade by means of a new fresh install.

I've been lugging along a very old .Xdefaults, from the days when that
was the file we used to tell X our preferences.  And have kept it on
every OS for years.. I've just been symlinking ~/.Xresources to it
~/.Xdefaults ever since that change happened... years ago, now.

I forgot to create that symlink when I updated to `stretch'

I've had
  XTerm*metaSendsEscape:        true
  
in there for a good while.

Thanks to you all, once again.