UTF-8 and Alt key in the console

[John T.]

Hello,

It is understood that although the Meta-key sequences
work in an xterm with vim on UTF-8, they don't on the
linux console.

That's because vim and xterm have an understanding about
how to function in UTF-8 regarding the Meta key. Xterm
translates the would-be ISO-8859 high-bit-char to its
UTF-8 representation, and vim catches that. This is the
way to move the traditional 8th-bit Meta convention from
single-byte encodings to UTF-8.

The linux console could function that way too, so that the
Meta-key would be recognized for those not willing to make
Meta send an ESC prefix; this behavior can be toggled with
the setmetamode command. Seems it's quite a simple code
snippet.

I'd like to know whether it would be an accepted change.

Regards,
--
John


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