Re: Accessing remote Emacs from a Mac terminal emulator

[Jai Dayal]

I use a mac. To enable the Alt key as meta, do the following:

In the terminal (your Terminal.app) go:
Preferences --> Keyboard, and then check the box for "Use option as meta
key".

Jai


On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 5:42 PM, MBR <mbr@arlsoft.com> wrote:

> I need to log into a shell on a remote server and then invoke Emacs from
> the command line.  Up until recently my local machine was a Windows laptop.
>  I was running 'putty' locally.  Putty's front end is a terminal emulator,
>  and it speaks ssh out its back end.
>
> I recently switched to a Mac, so to accomplish the same task I've been
> running the Mac terminal emulator (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app)
> and at the local command line I run:
>
>    ssh -p port username@domainname
>
> After I log into the remote machine's shell, I start up Emacs, just as
> I've been doing for ages.  Almost everything works just as it used to, BUT
> when I need to type a keystroke with the Meta modifier (i.e. use the ALT
> modifier key) the modifier isn't recognized.
>
> Although I can get the same effect by using the ESC key, that's often a
> real pain.  For example, if I want to move forward a word at a time, I'll
> usually type ALT+f, and then release the "f" key and type it again several
> times without ever releasing the ALT key.  To do the same thing with the
> ESC key, I've got to press ESC, release ESC, press F, release F, repeat
> until the cursor's where I want it.
>
> Clearly putty sends something in the SSH protocol that lets the remote
> Emacs know when the ALT key is pressed.  I don't know if it's the Mac
> terminal emulator or the Mac implementation of SSH that's failing to pass
> that information along.
>
> Does anyone here have any idea what I need to do to allow the information
> about the state of the ALT modifier key to be passed to the server where
> Emacs is running?
>
>    Mark R.
>
>
>