Re: vterm and Meta?

[hw]

On Tue, 2023-08-01 at 11:05 -0400, Spencer Baugh wrote:
> hw <hw@adminart.net> writes:
> > On Tue, 2023-08-01 at 14:12 +0200, Thibaut Verron wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > > 
> > > Are you using emacs in a terminal?
> > 
> > sometimes
> > 
> > > If not, Meta is usually bound to a modifier key (afaik by default the 
> > > one immediately left of the space bar, e.g. alt on PC keyboards), and 
> > > that works in vterm.
> > 
> > Uhm, I've been using emacs for over 30 years and in all these years,
> > the ESC key was always used for a meta key across all instances by
> > default.  It's the same when running emacs in a terminal, as an X11
> > client or with wayland.
> > 
> > The key left of the space bar has always been the Alt key on all PC
> > keyboards I've used so far.  Pressing, for example, Alt-x, inserts x
> > into the buffer (like into this buffer I'm writing this reply in, and
> > into the vterm buffer).
> > 
> > How is it that it's different for you?
> > 
> > > If you don't usually run programs using the Esc key in vterm, you can 
> > > unbind it and send it with vterm-send-next-key when necessary.
> > 
> > Hm, true, I can try that.  It's not like I need the ESC key too often
> > in a terminal.  Somehow I didn't think of that, thank you :)
> > 
> > But then, maybe it makes sense to reconfigure things to use the Alt
> > key instead of ESC?  Apparently Alt doesn't do anything now and may be
> > less awkward to type.  Hmm ...
> 
> It's possible to separate these in graphical frames.  I think you could
> 
> (define-key local-function-key-map (kbd "<escape>") nil)
> 
> to make <escape> no longer map to ESC.  Then you can remove the ESC
> binding in vterm and add an <escape> binding.  Then Meta bindings and
> <escape> will be separate.
> 
> (I know this because I figured it out for some evil-mode users and wrote
> it up here: https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil/issues/1780 )

Cool, only when I disable the only Meta key I have, I won't have a
Meta key at all, would I?  I'd have to somehow configure some of the
Alt keys as Meta first.