C-M-anything gives no response

C-M-anything gives no response

[Robin Wilson]

Hi

I've been trying to use keybindings such as C-M-k, and have found that 
none of them have worked. I've done some more investigation and, by 
using C-h k, found that anything with C-M then any key is not being 
recognised by emacs as anything at all!

I've searched Google Groups and the internet in general, and everywhere 
else I can think of but can't find a way to solve this. I'm using emacs 
through cygwin on Windows if that helps, and it works in the native 
windows port of emacs, but not in the cygwin version.

Any ideas anyone?

Cheers,

Robin

Re: C-M-anything gives no response

[B. T. Raven]

"Robin Wilson" <r.t.wilson@rmplc.co.uk> wrote in message
news:m--dnefWmtPZZS3ZRVnyjw@pipex.net...
> Hi
>
> I've been trying to use keybindings such as C-M-k, and have found that
> none of them have worked. I've done some more investigation and, by
> using C-h k, found that anything with C-M then any key is not being
> recognised by emacs as anything at all!
>
> I've searched Google Groups and the internet in general, and everywhere
> else I can think of but can't find a way to solve this. I'm using emacs
> through cygwin on Windows if that helps, and it works in the native
> windows port of emacs, but not in the cygwin version.
>
> Any ideas anyone?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Robin

See if the cygwin build has something corresponding to the w32-alt-is-meta
variable. Anyway even on the windows build there are some strange
key-chord synonyms: C-h k C-M-m reports that M-RET is undefined. Since C-m
is the same as RET, maybe it's impossible to get around this behavior ???

Ed.

Re: C-M-anything gives no response

[Eric Hanchrow]

>>>>> "Robin" == Robin Wilson <r.t.wilson@rmplc.co.uk> writes:

    Robin> Hi I've been trying to use keybindings such as C-M-k, and
    Robin> have found that none of them have worked.  I've done some
    Robin> more investigation and, by using C-h k, found that anything
    Robin> with C-M then any key is not being recognised by emacs as
    Robin> anything at all!

    Robin> I've searched Google Groups and the internet in general,
    Robin> and everywhere else I can think of but can't find a way to
    Robin> solve this.  I'm using emacs through cygwin on Windows if
    Robin> that helps, and it works in the native windows port of
    Robin> emacs, but not in the cygwin version.

    Robin> Any ideas anyone?

I realize this isn't particularly helpful, but: what you're describing
is common when Emacs runs in console mode, as opposed to graphical
mode.  In some systems, it's possible to fiddle the console to get it
to generate the right events when you press control-meta-whatever; in
others, it isn't.

You might try running Emacs under Cygwin's rxvt, rather than using the
window created by cmd.exe.  As I recall, that's some improvement, but
it's still not perfect.  The best solution that I recall involved
getting a hacked up version of PuTTY
(http://gecko.gc.maricopa.edu/~medgar/puttycyg/), and using that as a
terminal emulator -- it gets the Meta key right.

After saying all that, though, I will confess: I never use the Cygwin
Emacs; instead I use the native Win32 emacs, with cygwin tools -- i.e.,
I put Cygwin on Emacs' path, and run bash as my shell, and have
find-dired-find-program set to 'find.exe', etc.

-- 
... there are any number of partisan Democrats lurking in
engineering departments and liberal moles in software-writing
offices.
        -- Molly Ivins

Re: C-M-anything gives no response

[Robin Wilson]

Eric Hanchrow wrote:
> After saying all that, though, I will confess: I never use the Cygwin
> Emacs; instead I use the native Win32 emacs, with cygwin tools -- i.e.,
> I put Cygwin on Emacs' path, and run bash as my shell, and have
> find-dired-find-program set to 'find.exe', etc.
> 

Hi

Thanks for your advice both of you. In some ways I prefer the native 
Win32 emacs - but that seems to have a few problems for me with regards 
to things like filename completion. In the console emacs, if I do C-x 
C-f and type a file or directory name and press TAB it completes it, but 
in Win32 emacs it only seems to do that for a very few files, which is 
rather strange. Any ideas about that? Apart from that I'd quite like to 
use the Win32 emacs as it lets you use the menu's properly (which is 
handy when you're in an unfamilier mode and you want to check out the 
commands available graphically).

I am using cygwin in rxvt at the moment, but it doesn't seem to be any 
different in this regard to plain console. I have found that ESC-C-k 
will work instead of C-M-k, but that is a bit of a pain to use.

I was going to use emacs in X under Cygwin, but I have a rather strange 
problem with XFCE under Cygwin which, as yet, no-one on the cygwin 
mailing list has responded to.

Cheers,

Robin

Re: C-M-anything gives no response

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Sun, 09 Jul 2006 19:12:12 +0100
> From: Robin Wilson <r.t.wilson@rmplc.co.uk>
> 
> In some ways I prefer the native 
> Win32 emacs - but that seems to have a few problems for me with regards 
> to things like filename completion. In the console emacs, if I do C-x 
> C-f and type a file or directory name and press TAB it completes it, but 
> in Win32 emacs it only seems to do that for a very few files, which is 
> rather strange.

What version of Emacs is that?  And how few is ``a very few files''?
Completion worked for me in "emacs -nw" in the latest CVS version for
as long as I tried.

Also, does it help to invoke "emacs -nw -q"?  Perhaps your .emacs
customizations are the culprit?

> I am using cygwin in rxvt at the moment, but it doesn't seem to be any 
> different in this regard to plain console.

I only tried the native Command Prompt window.  I'd guess Cygwin rxvt
_does_ have something to do with this, as there are fundamental
incompatibilities between Cygwin and native Windows handling of the
console device.  Are you sure you tried in ``plain console''? could it
be that the Cygwin Bash was running in the plain console?

Re: C-M-anything gives no response

[Robin Wilson]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
> Also, does it help to invoke "emacs -nw -q"?  Perhaps your .emacs
> customizations are the culprit?
> 

Hi

I have in fact managaged to solve it, as I was writing this email to you 
I thought of something to check, and found that it was the problem! It 
was a binding I had in my .emacs which had never worked properly so I'd 
stopped using, but I'd left in my .emacs. It bound TAB to a function 
called indent-or-complete which meant that TAB either indented the line, 
or completed it if there was something to complete. Obviously in W32 
Emacs this was causing some problems, and removing that binding has made 
it all work again.

Thanks for your help in solving this problem, and I'll try using W32 
Emacs with Cygwin now. How is it best to set it up so that I can run 
emacs filename in my cygwin terminal and get W32 emacs to load?

Thanks again,

Robin

Re: C-M-anything gives no response

[Le Wang]

Robin Wilson wrote:
> Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> >
> > Also, does it help to invoke "emacs -nw -q"?  Perhaps your .emacs
> > customizations are the culprit?
> >
>
> Hi
>
> I have in fact managaged to solve it, as I was writing this email to you
> I thought of something to check, and found that it was the problem! It
> was a binding I had in my .emacs which had never worked properly so I'd
> stopped using, but I'd left in my .emacs. It bound TAB to a function
> called indent-or-complete which meant that TAB either indented the line,
> or completed it if there was something to complete. Obviously in W32
> Emacs this was causing some problems, and removing that binding has made
> it all work again.

So,  that binding worked for you in TTY mode?  Strange.

If you had to use "emacs -q -nw" to get it to work.  That is a very
revealing piece of information, which would've been helpful when you
posed your question.  Always use "emacs -q" to try to repro your
problem; and if the problem goes away with "-q", suspect your init
files.

> Thanks for your help in solving this problem, and I'll try using W32
> Emacs with Cygwin now. How is it best to set it up so that I can run
> emacs filename in my cygwin terminal and get W32 emacs to load?

Look into gnuclient/gnuserv to run only one emacs session.  You can
send files to emacs in the same way you get cygwin to interoperate with
other "native" programs:

% gnuclient `cygpwth -w <file>`

Emacs understands "-m" paths too.  You only need to do this for unix
style absolute paths, e.b. /usr/* /home/*, it should "just work" for
relative paths.

--
Le