Bug#651035: please decide how terminals should report Alt+letter combinations

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Russ Allbery wrote:
> Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> writes:

>>  1. Applications should all behave the same way wrt handling of the
>>     Meta key in terminals.  Advertising the smm capability makes that
>>     basically impossible.
>
> Basically, I'm dubious the gain from this is worth the effort.  Presumably
> Thomas has some reason for making xterm's default what it is currently, if
> only "it's always been that way."

The xterm terminfo entry does not currently advertise the smm
capability, if I am reading "infocmp xterm" output correctly.

> My guess is that most people who are
> explicitly using xterm (which usually requires some effort these days,
> since the desktop environments all default to something else) are pretty
> big on "it's always been that way" behavior.  :)

I see.  (I only know myself --- I use xterm because it is fast.) :)