xterm: incorrect behavior with meta keys? rxvt and gnome-terminal behave correctly.

[Thomas Dickey]

----- Original Message -----
| From: "Nick" <atod101101 at gmail.com>
| To: "xorg-devel" <xorg-devel at lists.x.org>
| Sent: Monday, March 10, 2025 12:27:46 AM
| Subject: xterm: incorrect behavior with meta keys? rxvt and gnome-terminal behave correctly.

| Does anyone know why Emacs-like keybindings such as Meta-b (back word) and
| Meta-f (forward word) do not behave correctly in 'xterm', but behave
| correctly in 'rxvt' and 'gnome-terminal'?
| 
| When pressing Meta_L-[b,p] in rxvt or gnome-terminal the Emacs behavior is
| correct, jumping forwards and backwards a word.  When pressing the same in
| 'xterm' the following characters appear and the behavior isn't present:
| Meta_L-b 'â ' , Meta_L-f ' æ'.  This occurs both on MacOS and Debian Linux
| 12.  I tested both ksh and bash shells.
| 
| I'm wondering if this is a bug in xterm, the shell or some other layer.
| Any pointers on how to debug are appreciated.

it's in the manpage:

https://invisible-island.net/xterm/manpage/xterm.html#VT100-Widget-Resources:eightBitMeta

(urxvt's manpage discussion is based on xterm's,
but emacs is the original source of the problem)

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey <dickey at invisible-island.net>
https://invisible-island.net