Re: S-up and emacs -nw?

[Joe Casadonte]

Fredrik,

On 19 Oct 2002, Fredrik Staxeng wrote:

> "Joe Casadonte" <jcasadonte@northbound-train.com> writes:
>
>>1) I ultimately want to run this on a laptop running Debian, with no
>>   X support (I only have 24 meg of memory and 100 meg of hard drive
>>   space left).  Is there a better terminal type than 'linux' to
>>   use?  Can I just arbitrarily reset the terminal type?
>
> 24 megs used to be plenty for X + twm + xterm + Emacs, but perhaps
> not anymore. But anyway, just resetting the terminal type will not
> do any good.

I saw somewhere, and I can't find it now, that console was OK with 12
or 16 Meg of RAM, and X wanted 128!  I can't find that at the moment.
Maybe that is the best thing to do -- I'll have to find some more disk
space, though.

> The terminal type says which termcap/terminfo entry to use. The
> terminfo entry describes what the terminal does. What you want to do
> is to extend what the terminal does, and loadkeys might be able to
> do what you want.

This is what's confusing to me.  I thought loadkeys would change
things at the kernel level, to then be interpreted at the terminfo
level?  Something like:

1. Keyboard (raw keycode/scancode type stuff)
2. Kernel (loadkeys can affect this)
3. Terminfo/ncurses
4. Emacs (linking in via ncurses)

If that's the correct hierarchy, I'm not sure what the relationship is
between 2 & 3.  Does terminfo interpret <ESC>[A as UP, or does the
kernel do that and just pass UP to terminfo?  Or is terminfo more used
for things like how to clear the screen and such?

Assuming there's some kind of shared relationship between the kernel
and terminfo, do I need to change both layers?  Change the kernel via
loadkeys and then adapt my own terminal type?

> You need to assign distinct sequences to all combinations that you
> want to be distinct. E.g. Shift-Up needs to be distinct from Up.
>
> Then you need to tell Emacs how to interpret your new sequences.

OK, I start up emacs and type a shift F4.  It tells me that <f14> is
undefined.  I do a C-h l (view-lossage) and I see:

C-h k ESC [ 2 6 ~ C-h l

So who interpreted <ESC>[26~ as <f14>?  Emacs??

>>3) Emacs under Debian uses terminfo -- can I make it use termcap
>>   instead?  Do I want to?  Termcap seems to have more terminal
>>   types defined, at least on my system.
>
> This is of no use since the best entry for you to use is still
> linux.

Yeah, after reading some more, I pretty much came to this conclusion.

>>4) I'm used to using NTEmacs, and my keybindings are very influenced
>>   by the fact that S-f4 produces S-f4 and not f16, and C-f9
>>   produces C-f9 and not nothing.  Do I have a reasonable chance in
>>   hell of getting the linux console to generate the same
>>   keystrokes?  I have a LOT of functions bound to the combinations
>>   of C- M- and S- with the function keys 1-12 (i.e. standard PC
>>   keyboard).  It would really suck to lose all of that.
>
> I don't think it's that hard. From looking at the defkeymap.gz
> somewhere under /usr/share/keymaps, it seems that loadkeys should be
> able to do what you want. There is a layer of indirection, so you
> need to define a string, say
>
> string CF11 = "\033[21;1~"
>
> and then refer to it in the map part
>
> control keycode  87 = CF11

I pretty much did that and it didn't work.  It didn't like CF11 (I
used SF4, but you get what I'm saying) no matter where I defined it
(i.e. before or after it's referenced, after being how the default
stuff was done).  So I used something like F104, and it still did not
affect anything.  That's when I started wondering if I need to change
both the kernel layer and the terminfo layer.

>>I guess I've got to start looking into ways to get Win95 back on the
>>laptop.  Oh my, I can't believe I just typed that.....
>
> If you just want to run Emacs, I think that Debian is the easiest
> way to go. But don't waste time on cygwin then.

Cygwin's just a red herring in all of this.  I just find it easier to
type at my PC than on my laptop, and since I have a choice at the
moment, it's what I was doing.  Nothing's been effective, either via
cygwin or on the console itself.

So, though my end objective is to use this for emacs, I am straying
way, way off-topic.  Is there a better forum that I should be posting
to?  Thanks very much to everyone so far for all of their help.  I'm
certainly learning more about this than I had wanted to.....

--
Regards,

joe
Joe Casadonte
jcasadonte@northbound-train.com

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
         Llama Fresh Farms => http://www.northbound-train.com
   Gay Media Resource List => http://www.northbound-train.com/gaymedia.html
            Perl for Win32 => http://www.northbound-train.com/perlwin32.html
               Emacs Stuff => http://www.northbound-train.com/emacs.html
          Music CD Trading => http://www.northbound-train.com/cdr.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                       Live Free, that's the message!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------