Re: UTF-8 and Alt key in the console

[H. Peter Anvin]

John T. wrote:
> OK, let's see if I can answer this.
>
> Vi has 32 years of ESC key use tradition which doesn't play
> well with "meta sends ESC".
>
> Even though "meta sets 8th bit" is "broken" in your point-of-view,
> that didn't stop it from being used all these years. The fact
> that it maps into real characters is not a problem if you can just
> use a CTRL-V equivalent in bash or vim.
>
> Furthermore, it is an _option_. No one is obliged to use it.
> So it's a question of:
>
> .. _forcing_ the end of "meta sets 8th bit"
> .. leaving things the way they are, and have them keep working,
>  as xterm did.
>
> So guess we should fix xterm too?
>
> I think you're exagerating.

Hardly.  vim clearly can deal with the ESC-is-prefix issue anyway, since 
otherwise it wouldn't be able to use arrow keys.

That being said, quite frankly, *both* Meta key conventions are 
incredibly broken.

What I would much prefer is to see would be a brand new convention where 
different keys (Ctrl, Meta, Super, Hyper, Alt or even in some cases 
Shift) issues a unique prefix which doesn't conflict with anything else. 
 Emacs has tried to promote such a convention of the format
<CAN> @ <bucky> <keystroke> which is a lot better, although it's a bit 
Emacs-centric (using <CAN> / ^X as the initial character is not really a 
very good choice.)

The best probably would be to introduce an escape code, along the lines 
of other escape codes in the terminal interfae.

	-hpa
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