Emacs key bindings change in terminal emulator

Question

I notice that some Emacs key bindings change in terminal emulator (xfce4-terminal).

For example: M-SPC under TTY sets the mark, but in xfce4-terminal it does nothing.

Also:

• C-- is undo in TTY and does nothing in terminal emulator
• C-/ is erase char backward in TTY, and undo in terminal emulator

Is there any solution to prevent the burden of learning two rules? I just want them as usual in TTY console.

Answer 1

It's not an Emacs problem so much as a terminal problem. Terminal emulators can be limited in the control and escape sequences they can send, so it's probably the case that the emulators you cited are swallowing your special characters before they even reach Emacs. Try hitting C-h l (or M-x view-lossage) to see if your key combinations are arriving in Emacs.

In addition to the answer that Legoscia cited, also check out this thread and this thread.

Unless you have a strong reason to stay in a terminal, you might consider running the GUI version and then running one of the various shells within it (eg, shell, eshell, ansi-term).