Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 23:55:49 -0500 (EST) From: Obi Wan Oblivion <vdk@chaosphere.com> To: David Lee <David.Lee.ddlee@nt.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Emacs in FreeBSD Environment Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980317224818.2016C-100000@logrus.chaosphere.com> In-Reply-To: <1141744A9866D111B6C90000F8BCBC240CA586@bcarua63.ca.nortel.com>
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On Mon, 16 Mar 1998, David Lee wrote: > I am running FreeBSD 2.2.5 on a Pentium 75 with 16 Mb of RAM. My question > is about the Emacs editor. When I run Emacs, my <ALT> key does not work as > my <META> key. Instead, I am forced to use my <ESC> key. I prefer using > the <ALT>. When I use Emacs under Linux on the same machine, I can use the > <ALT> without problems. I'm thinking you are referring to running Emacs sans XWin. The only reason I kept Linux on my system as long as I did (about two weeks) is because Emacs worked flawlessly in text mode right away. It isn't so easy in FreeBSD, but I think this is what you're looking for: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=1004671+1015107+/usr/local/www/db/text/1997/freebsd-questions/19970629.freebsd-questions It's an old posting (circa Jul 97) complete with a keymap. A good rule of thumb when it comes to posting to "questions" is to always check the archives first. You would be absolutely amazed at what you can find. Anyway, extract the keymap from the rest of the message, store it somewhere sane (like /usr/share/syscons/keymaps), name it something sane (like emacs-safe.us.kbd), and do: # kbdcontrol -l /usr/share/syscons/keymaps/emacs-safe.us.kbd Then play around with Emacs, see if you like it. If you do, then edit your /etc/rc.conf and change the line: keymap="NO" # keymap in /usr/share/syscons/keymaps/* (or NO). to: keymap="emacs-safe.us.kbd" # keymap with support for ALT-bound META Note: This keymap will also set your backspace key to send delete instead of '^H'. If you want an explanation as to why all of this is necessary, you can read this posting, also from the archives: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=152538+156990+/usr/local/www/db/text/1997/freebsd-questions/19970706.freebsd-questions Hope this helps! A note to the FreeBSD team: It seems that this question, or slight variations thereof, has been asked frequently enough to deserve a place in the FAQ. I would be willing to write such an entry if that would speed its inclusion. Also, would there be any benefit gained or lost by including the keymap referenced above (or a variation) in the next release? Cheers! -Jeff Transformers - They're more than meets the eye! To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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