On Fri, 16 Aug 2024 at 15:47, Chet Ramey <chet.ra...@case.edu> wrote:
> On 8/16/24 6:40 AM, Reuben Thomas wrote: > > I don't know that they're mutually contradictory. If you look at Tim's bug > report, you see a link to the bugzilla report he's forwarding, and that's > from you. It's a report that Meta-p and "\M-p" behave differently when used > to bind key sequences, and your complaint now is that I chose the behavior > you don't prefer then. > Oh, OK! If you're going to have meta-p (however you enter it on your keyboard) What I'm saying is that on macOS, the option key is the meta key, in that > it can be configured to either send meta characters (option-p emits "π", > for example) or be used as a meta key in the way you mean it with the > escape meta-prefix. > I think this may be the nub of the issue: you are defining the Meta key as "the key that sends meta characters", whereas I'm defining it as "the key (if any) ascribed the Meta function". So in particular, it's a certain key on the keyboard. I think it's just a terminology difference. If you think meta means to > unconditionally send the meta-prefix (escape), that's fine, but is that > the same as the `meta character' (characters with the eighth bit set) that > convert-meta refers to? > So, I don't mean any of that. I think Meta refers to a key on the keyboard. > * Even in Emacs, on which readline is modelled, even when running in the > > terminal, one doesn't have to write keybindings in different ways > > depending on the terminal setup. > > How does it do that? Or does it simply default to the equivalent of > setting convert-meta to on, whatever it is? > I have no idea, and as a user, I don't care. That's my point here, really: most users don't care about the minutiae of what pressing the Meta key does, under the hood. > But readline doesn't use `meta' in the way you mean. It's always > consistently used meta as referring to a character with the eighth bit set. > Look at the `input-meta' and `output-meta' variables. You might not think > that such a distinction has value in today's world, but let's at least > use the terminology readline has traditionally used. > Exactly: I think the problem here from readline's point of view is to square the fact that it has traditionally used terminology in a certain way with the fact that the distinction is unimportant to most users today. So you want the \M- portion of the key sequence to reflect what the meta > key on your keyboard does (whichever one that is, since lots of keyboards > on windows laptops, for instance, don't have a meta key, either), without > telling readline explicitly. It's a new capability, basically defaulting > convert-meta to on for key bindings while being careful not to strip the > eighth bit from any multibyte characters (which I think we already do, to > be clear). > It sounds like it is indeed a new capability! set convert-meta on > > in your .inputrc before any key bindings and see if that gets you where you > want? If there are no negative effects when entering multibyte characters > from the keyboard, we can talk about defaulting convert-meta to on in a > locale with UTF-8 encoding. > I tried setting convert-meta to "on", but this breaks entering e.g. accented characters. Unsurprisingly, since now it is converting all my ≥8-bit characters to multiple 7-bit characters; for example, a (UK) pound sign (£) comes out as hash followed by newline. Many thanks for your patience, by the way! -- https://rrt.sc3d.org
