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Due to the history of MsgEd TE, it heavily depends on typical PC keyboard combinations like Alt-keys, combinations of Ctrl with cursor keys, and so on. Not all of them are easy to reflect on a Unix console or in an xterm.
As for the Alt keys (Alt-X and so on): MsgEd TE tries to recognize all sorts of ways in which clients reflect Alt or Meta key combinations. If that still does not work on your console, besides contacting me so that I can fix it, you can emulate an Alt key with the Esc key: If you press and release the Esc key and then press a letter, MsgEd TE will treat this as if you pressed Alt and that letter. However, you have to do this fast, because if no key is pressed after the Esc for more than 0.2 seconds, MsgEd TE will assume that you really meant to press a single Esc key, which is also frequently used in MsgEd TE.
Some other key combinations, like Ctrl-Left and so on, are not reproducable in an xterm or on a Unix console at all. Therefore, the sample configuration file sample.cfg contains a bunch of settings that bind those functions that are by default bound to key combinations that cannot be keyed on Unix to other key combinations.
A nasty little problem might occur with the backspace key. If, on your
system, the backspace key deletes the character under the cursor
rather than the character on the left hand side of the cursor, you might have
to turn the BS127
switch on by adding Switch BS127 On
to your
configuration file. The sample configuration file already contains correct
settings of the BS127
switch for some widespread Unix consoles.
Also, some xterm variants are really broken. For example, I have seen xterm’s reporting code 127 for both Delete and Backspace, so you will only be able to have either Backspace or Delete working. Also, some xterms doe not report codes for Home and End at all. If you have such an xterm, a tip would be to install rxvt and use msged in an rxvt window instead of an xterm window.
Entering national special characters like cyrillics, the German a dieresis,
or the french accented characters, is always a problem on Unix. If you want
to do that with MsgEd TE, refer to the sample configuration file and the
documentation on the EnableSC
keyword (see The
EnableSC
keyword). The most easiest solution is to put the
EnableSC
keyword into the configuration file, but if you do this, you
will loose the Alt key combination functionality and will have to
emulate all alt keystorkes using the ESC-technique explained above.
If all this sounds very clumsy to you, perhaps you might volunteer to create a more Unix-friendly keyboard layout for MsgEd TE. MsgEd TE allows to freely redefine the keyboard layout. See Redifining the Keyboard Bindings, for more information on this. The first person that provides me with a really Unix-friendly set of ‘ReadKey’ and ‘EditKey’ configuration statements will receive special honour in this manual …
Next: Notes on Big Endian Hardware, Previous: Notes on UNIX terminal I/O, Up: UNIX installation [Index]