Re: emacs config

[Stefan Monnier]

> Dear List,  thanks in advance for your advice. I haven't touched Unix for
> 15 years but remember loving emacs. Now I've been given a SuSE machine to
> get a lot programming done by the end of the month, and I'm having
> problems getting emacs to work.  Here's the situation:
> The SuSE machine is only accessible via SSH from a Windows (ms-dog)
> command prompt.
> The SuSE command line works find across SSH.  I invoked emacs across SSH,
> went through the tutorial, and a few problems arose:  The backspace key
> maps to C-h.

Change the configuration of your terminal emulator (your SSH program on
Windows) to send DEL (aka ^? or ASCII-127, instead) instead of C-h when
hitting backspace.

> The delete key maps to ~.  The function keys map to letters or numbers and
> ~.  This is as far as I got - I don't know what else may or may not work.
> I'm under the gun to produce so thanks again for your advice.  I remember
> emacs being very cool, and am excited at the prospect of getting
> it working.

Please tell us what program you're using on the Windows side
(e.g. which implementation of SSH, there are at least 3 popular ones), and
tell us what is the value of the TERM environment variable on the SuSE
machine when you're connected via this SSH program.

For each key:
- Type "hello", then the key, the C-h l
- Look at the end of the *Help* buffer for the sequence of codes between
  "h e l l o" and "C-h l": this is the escape sequence that your terminal
  emulator sent to Emacs in response to your hitting the key.
- You should then tell Emacs to recognize this sequence as the key you hit.
  This can be done by adding things like the following in your ~/.emacs:

   (define-key function-key-map "\e[~378~" [f65])

Note that normally you don't have to do it.  Instead, the terminal should
send "standard" escape sequences.  I suspect you're using one of the
commercial SSH clients, which tend to disregard standards.

Try PuTTY instead.  It's small, fast, free, and works very well when logging
onto a Unix machine (especially a GNU/Linux one) because it actually follows
standards.


        Stefan