meta keys?

[Jonathan Underwood]

K. Richard Pixley wrote:
> In redhat releases and in other operating systems, a default xterm 
> window will provide me with a shell wherein <alt>-<delete> will backward 
> delete a word, <alt>-b, will move the cursor backward a word, <alt>-f 
> will move forward a word, etc.  That is, emacs editing mode works and 
> acts on the meta keys.
> 
> This doesn't work on fedora core 3, at least not out of the box.  Can 
> anyone explain to me what I need to do to get my meta key editing back, 
> please?  Or point me to relevant documentation that might help me figure 
> out what's going on?

Thsi had me puzzled too. It turns out that the newer xterm code has 
UTF-8 enabled by default. This screws up Alt-x in emacs running in an 
xterm, for example, as it inserts a weird character. After some research 
into this, this is what I settled on - place the following in 
.Xresources in your home directory. Do look at the URL mentioned in the 
comment though. Note also you'll have to do xrdb -merge .Xresources once 
you've edited .Xresources.

!Quick fix for the Alt/Meta problem
!XTerm*metaSendsEscape: true

!Better fix for the Alt/Meta problem
!See http://www.leonerd.org.uk/programming/hints/xterm-8bit.html
!See also .inputrc
XTerm*utf8:            1
XTerm*eightBitInput:   false
XTerm*eightBitControl: false
XTerm*eightBitOutput:  true