Re: How does the Meta/Alt-Key work behind the scenes?

[Thorsten Jolitz]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> Try: "emacs -nw -Q" and then "C-% C-% C-h l"
> In the *Help* buffer you'll then see the bytes received by Emacs and
> you'll notice that C-% is not there.  

Yes, I see. 

> Emacs handles this via the `input-decode-map' to convert this sequence
> back into its more meaningful "C-%".  This map is mostly initialized
> from the terminfo database (and completed by lisp/term/$TERM.el).

How much work there is involved just to enable a few apparently
inoffensive key combinations...

Thank you, the /term/xterm.el file is a great source of information for
me. And its nice to find out a bit about how Emacs works under the hood.

-- 
cheers,
Thorsten