There are two relevant issues:
(a) how to configure a terminal to send an escape character as
a prefix.
(b) how to configure a terminal to handle meta-key processing.
Notwithstanding the confusion arising from bash, they're different.
Even if all of the terminals are (for the ones that handle this),
configured to support (a), there are still functional differences
in (a), which are well-known, having been the subject of other bug
reports.
For (b), it appears that xterm (and some others such as kterm which
derive from the same source) are the only ones that implement the
meta key feature as documented in terminfo(5). Specifically, the
features is not implemented in any source based on rxvt, vte, putty,
or kde.
In xterm #277, I've addressed (b):
eightBitMeta (class EightBitMeta)
This controls the way xterm modifies the eighth bit of a sin-
gle-byte key when the eightBitInput resource is set. The
default is "locale".
The resource value is a string, evaluated as a boolean after
startup.
false
The key is sent unmodified.
locale
The key is modified only if the locale uses eight-bit
encoding.
true The key is sent modified.
never
The key is always sent unmodified.
Except for the never choice, xterm honors the terminfo capabil-
ities smm (set meta mode) and rmm (reset meta mode), allowing
the feature to be turned on or off dynamically.
If eightBitMeta is enabled when the locale uses UTF-8, xterm
encodes the value as UTF-8 (since patch #183 in 2003).
--
Thomas E. Dickey <dickey@invisible-island.net>
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature