GNU bug report logs - #18996
24.4; Pressing Alt-g shows Esc g- when running emacs inside terminal and in GUI mode it shows M-g

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Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: "L. Guruprasad" <lgp171188 <at> gmail.com>
To: bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org
Subject: 24.4; Pressing Alt-g shows Esc g- when running emacs inside terminal
 and in GUI mode it shows M-g
Date: Sat, 08 Nov 2014 14:07:03 +0530

Hi,

When I press Alt-g as part of executing the shortcut M-g g, when running
emacs within the terminal using the -nw flag, it shows up in the
minibuffer as "Esc g-". But when I run the same in the GUI Emacs, it
shows up as "M-g". This can be misleading and confusing to users who do
not know Esc and Meta keys are equivalent.

Further, when I press Alt-x, it shows up as M-x in both the
scenarios. So it doesn't look like Emacs cannot differentiate between
the two when running inside the terminal without a GUI.

I vaguely remember seeing M-g in the terminal on pressing Alt-g some
time back, maybe in an older emacs version. But not sure.

In GNU Emacs 24.4.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.14.3)
 of 2014-10-26 on trouble, modified by Debian
System Description:	Debian GNU/Linux unstable (sid)

Configured using:
 `configure --build x86_64-linux-gnu --prefix=/usr
 --sharedstatedir=/var/lib --libexecdir=/usr/lib
 --localstatedir=/var/lib --infodir=/usr/share/info
 --mandir=/usr/share/man --with-pop=yes
 --enable-locallisppath=/etc/emacs24:/etc/emacs:/usr/local/share/emacs/24.4/site-lisp:/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/24.4/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp
 --build x86_64-linux-gnu --prefix=/usr --sharedstatedir=/var/lib
 --libexecdir=/usr/lib --localstatedir=/var/lib
 --infodir=/usr/share/info --mandir=/usr/share/man --with-pop=yes
 --enable-locallisppath=/etc/emacs24:/etc/emacs:/usr/local/share/emacs/24.4/site-lisp:/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/24.4/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp
 --with-x=yes --with-x-toolkit=gtk3 --with-toolkit-scroll-bars
 'CFLAGS=-g -O2 -fstack-protector-strong -Wformat
 -Werror=format-security -Wall' CPPFLAGS=-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2
 LDFLAGS=-Wl,-z,relro'

Important settings:
  value of $LANG: en_IN.utf8
  locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix

Major mode: Lisp Interaction

Minor modes in effect:
  ido-everywhere: t
  yas-global-mode: t
  yas-minor-mode: t
  global-linum-mode: t
  linum-mode: t
  tooltip-mode: t
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  column-number-mode: t
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  transient-mark-mode: t

Recent input:
ESC [ > 1 ; 3 8 0 1 ; 0 c ESC x r e p o r t - e RET
C-g C-g ESC x g DEL DEL ESC x C-g ESC x r e RET C-g
ESC g C-g ESC x r e p RET

Recent messages:
[yas] Loading for `emacs-lisp-mode', just-in-time: (lambda nil
(yas--load-directory-1 (quote
/home/guruprasad/.emacs.d/elpa/yasnippet-20140729.1240/snippets/emacs-lisp-mode)
(quote emacs-lisp-mode)))!
[yas] Loading compiled snippets from
/home/guruprasad/.emacs.d/elpa/yasnippet-20140729.1240/snippets/emacs-lisp-mode
[yas] Loading for `prog-mode', just-in-time: (lambda nil
(yas--load-directory-1 (quote
/home/guruprasad/.emacs.d/elpa/yasnippet-20140729.1240/snippets/prog-mode)
(quote prog-mode)))!
[yas] Loading compiled snippets from
/home/guruprasad/.emacs.d/elpa/yasnippet-20140729.1240/snippets/prog-mode
Loading
/home/guruprasad/.emacs.d/elpa/yasnippet-20140729.1240/snippets/prog-mode/.yas-setup...done
For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a.
Quit [2 times]
delete-backward-char: Text is read-only
Quit [3 times]
M-g C-g is undefined

Load-path shadows:
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/usr/share/emacs/24.4/site-lisp/golang-mode/go-mode
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/golang-mode/go-mode-load hides
/usr/share/emacs/24.4/site-lisp/golang-mode/go-mode-load
/usr/share/emacs/24.4/site-lisp/debian-startup hides
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/debian-startup
/usr/share/emacs24/site-lisp/dictionaries-common/ispell hides
/usr/share/emacs/24.4/lisp/textmodes/ispell
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/rst hides
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/usr/share/emacs24/site-lisp/dictionaries-common/flyspell hides
/usr/share/emacs/24.4/lisp/textmodes/flyspell

Features:
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Memory information:
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Message #8 received at 18996 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Marcin Borkowski <mbork <at> mbork.pl>
To: "L. Guruprasad" <lgp171188 <at> gmail.com>
Cc: 18996 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#18996: 24.4;
 Pressing Alt-g shows Esc g- when running emacs inside terminal and in
 GUI mode it shows M-g
Date: Sat, 05 Mar 2016 19:14:17 +0100

On 2014-11-08, at 14:07, "L. Guruprasad" <lgp171188 <at> gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> When I press Alt-g as part of executing the shortcut M-g g, when running
> emacs within the terminal using the -nw flag, it shows up in the
> minibuffer as "Esc g-". But when I run the same in the GUI Emacs, it
> shows up as "M-g". This can be misleading and confusing to users who do
> not know Esc and Meta keys are equivalent.

Confirmed on GNU Emacs 25.1.50.6 (commit ac9a931).

> Further, when I press Alt-x, it shows up as M-x in both the
> scenarios. So it doesn't look like Emacs cannot differentiate between
> the two when running inside the terminal without a GUI.

This is not true: M-x is bound (by default) to
`execute-extended-command', which calls `read-extended-command', which
has at one point the literal string "M-x ", which is fed (via
a `concat', which shows prefix arguments, if any) directly to
`completing-read'.

> I vaguely remember seeing M-g in the terminal on pressing Alt-g some
> time back, maybe in an older emacs version. But not sure.

No idea, though I doubt.

All in all, I'll assign this a "wishlist" level - I agree with the OP
that it would be nice to have this solved, but I don't think this would
really confuse anyone.  (IMHO, if someone uses Emacs in a terminal, s?he
probably is advanced enough to know that M-g and Esc g are equivalent.)

-- 
Marcin Borkowski

Message #13 received at 18996 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Marcin Borkowski <mbork <at> mbork.pl>
Cc: 18996 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, lgp171188 <at> gmail.com
Subject: Re: bug#18996: 24.4;
 Pressing Alt-g shows Esc g- when running emacs inside terminal and in
 GUI mode it shows M-g
Date: Sat, 05 Mar 2016 20:52:14 +0200

> From: Marcin Borkowski <mbork <at> mbork.pl>
> Date: Sat, 05 Mar 2016 19:14:17 +0100
> Cc: 18996 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
> 
> > When I press Alt-g as part of executing the shortcut M-g g, when running
> > emacs within the terminal using the -nw flag, it shows up in the
> > minibuffer as "Esc g-". But when I run the same in the GUI Emacs, it
> > shows up as "M-g". This can be misleading and confusing to users who do
> > not know Esc and Meta keys are equivalent.
> 
> Confirmed on GNU Emacs 25.1.50.6 (commit ac9a931).
> 
> > Further, when I press Alt-x, it shows up as M-x in both the
> > scenarios. So it doesn't look like Emacs cannot differentiate between
> > the two when running inside the terminal without a GUI.
> 
> This is not true: M-x is bound (by default) to
> `execute-extended-command', which calls `read-extended-command', which
> has at one point the literal string "M-x ", which is fed (via
> a `concat', which shows prefix arguments, if any) directly to
> `completing-read'.
> 
> > I vaguely remember seeing M-g in the terminal on pressing Alt-g some
> > time back, maybe in an older emacs version. But not sure.
> 
> No idea, though I doubt.
> 
> All in all, I'll assign this a "wishlist" level - I agree with the OP
> that it would be nice to have this solved

To have what solved?

If you type "C-h l" after M-x, what do you see?

Message #16 received at 18996 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Marcin Borkowski <mbork <at> mbork.pl>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 18996 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, lgp171188 <at> gmail.com
Subject: Re: bug#18996: 24.4;
 Pressing Alt-g shows Esc g- when running emacs inside terminal and in
 GUI mode it shows M-g
Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2016 17:47:48 +0100

On 2016-03-05, at 19:52, Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org> wrote:

>> From: Marcin Borkowski <mbork <at> mbork.pl>
>> Date: Sat, 05 Mar 2016 19:14:17 +0100
>> Cc: 18996 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
>> 
>> > When I press Alt-g as part of executing the shortcut M-g g, when running
>> > emacs within the terminal using the -nw flag, it shows up in the
>> > minibuffer as "Esc g-". But when I run the same in the GUI Emacs, it
>> > shows up as "M-g". This can be misleading and confusing to users who do
>> > not know Esc and Meta keys are equivalent.
>> 
>> Confirmed on GNU Emacs 25.1.50.6 (commit ac9a931).
>> 
>> > Further, when I press Alt-x, it shows up as M-x in both the
>> > scenarios. So it doesn't look like Emacs cannot differentiate between
>> > the two when running inside the terminal without a GUI.
>> 
>> This is not true: M-x is bound (by default) to
>> `execute-extended-command', which calls `read-extended-command', which
>> has at one point the literal string "M-x ", which is fed (via
>> a `concat', which shows prefix arguments, if any) directly to
>> `completing-read'.
>> 
>> > I vaguely remember seeing M-g in the terminal on pressing Alt-g some
>> > time back, maybe in an older emacs version. But not sure.
>> 
>> No idea, though I doubt.
>> 
>> All in all, I'll assign this a "wishlist" level - I agree with the OP
>> that it would be nice to have this solved
>
> To have what solved?
>
> If you type "C-h l" after M-x, what do you see?

AFAIU, OP wants to see "M-g-" and not "ESC g-" after pressing M-g in an
Emacs session in a terminal.  This looks reasonable to me, though
definitely not a high priority.  If it's not possible/desirable, it
would be better to close this as "wontfix", but I do not know that.

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
Adam Mickiewicz University

Message #19 received at 18996 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Marcin Borkowski <mbork <at> mbork.pl>
Cc: 18996 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, lgp171188 <at> gmail.com
Subject: Re: bug#18996: 24.4;
 Pressing Alt-g shows Esc g- when running emacs inside terminal and in
 GUI mode it shows M-g
Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2016 19:10:51 +0200

> From: Marcin Borkowski <mbork <at> mbork.pl>
> Cc: lgp171188 <at> gmail.com, 18996 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
> Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2016 17:47:48 +0100
> 
> >> > Further, when I press Alt-x, it shows up as M-x in both the
> >> > scenarios. So it doesn't look like Emacs cannot differentiate between
> >> > the two when running inside the terminal without a GUI.
> >> 
> >> This is not true: M-x is bound (by default) to
> >> `execute-extended-command', which calls `read-extended-command', which
> >> has at one point the literal string "M-x ", which is fed (via
> >> a `concat', which shows prefix arguments, if any) directly to
> >> `completing-read'.
> >> 
> >> > I vaguely remember seeing M-g in the terminal on pressing Alt-g some
> >> > time back, maybe in an older emacs version. But not sure.
> >> 
> >> No idea, though I doubt.
> >> 
> >> All in all, I'll assign this a "wishlist" level - I agree with the OP
> >> that it would be nice to have this solved
> >
> > To have what solved?
> >
> > If you type "C-h l" after M-x, what do you see?
> 
> AFAIU, OP wants to see "M-g-" and not "ESC g-" after pressing M-g in an
> Emacs session in a terminal.

My point was that you will see "ESC g" in the "C-h l" output.  Which
means Emacs _doesn't_ know how to differentiate between ESC-x and M-x,
on the level that shows the prefix key prompts, such as M-g-.  What
happens here is that the command bound to "ESC x" deliberately
displays "M-x " in the echo area.  IOW, "M-x" is _not_ the key echo,
it's a message displayed by a command.

In sum, Emacs doesn't have a way to distinguish between M-c and ESC c,
for any character c, on a TTY.  We can only do that on a GUI frame.

Message #22 received at 18996 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: mbork <at> mbork.pl
Cc: 18996 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, lgp171188 <at> gmail.com
Subject: Re: bug#18996: 24.4;
 Pressing Alt-g shows Esc g- when running emacs inside terminal and in
 GUI mode it shows M-g
Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2016 19:35:27 +0200

> Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2016 19:10:51 +0200
> From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
> Cc: 18996 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, lgp171188 <at> gmail.com
> 
> My point was that you will see "ESC g" in the "C-h l" output.

Sorry, I meant to say "ESC g" and "ESC x", not just the former.

Message #29 received at 18996-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Marcin Borkowski <mbork <at> mbork.pl>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 18996-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org, lgp171188 <at> gmail.com
Subject: Re: bug#18996: 24.4;
 Pressing Alt-g shows Esc g- when running emacs inside terminal and in
 GUI mode it shows M-g
Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2016 07:01:26 +0100

On 2016-03-08, at 19:10, Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org> wrote:

>> From: Marcin Borkowski <mbork <at> mbork.pl>
>> Cc: lgp171188 <at> gmail.com, 18996 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
>> Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2016 17:47:48 +0100
>> 
>> >> > Further, when I press Alt-x, it shows up as M-x in both the
>> >> > scenarios. So it doesn't look like Emacs cannot differentiate between
>> >> > the two when running inside the terminal without a GUI.
>> >> 
>> >> This is not true: M-x is bound (by default) to
>> >> `execute-extended-command', which calls `read-extended-command', which
>> >> has at one point the literal string "M-x ", which is fed (via
>> >> a `concat', which shows prefix arguments, if any) directly to
>> >> `completing-read'.
>> >> 
>> >> > I vaguely remember seeing M-g in the terminal on pressing Alt-g some
>> >> > time back, maybe in an older emacs version. But not sure.
>> >> 
>> >> No idea, though I doubt.
>> >> 
>> >> All in all, I'll assign this a "wishlist" level - I agree with the OP
>> >> that it would be nice to have this solved
>> >
>> > To have what solved?
>> >
>> > If you type "C-h l" after M-x, what do you see?
>> 
>> AFAIU, OP wants to see "M-g-" and not "ESC g-" after pressing M-g in an
>> Emacs session in a terminal.
>
> My point was that you will see "ESC g" in the "C-h l" output.  Which
> means Emacs _doesn't_ know how to differentiate between ESC-x and M-x,
> on the level that shows the prefix key prompts, such as M-g-.  What
> happens here is that the command bound to "ESC x" deliberately
> displays "M-x " in the echo area.  IOW, "M-x" is _not_ the key echo,
> it's a message displayed by a command.
>
> In sum, Emacs doesn't have a way to distinguish between M-c and ESC c,
> for any character c, on a TTY.  We can only do that on a GUI frame.

OK, so I'm tagging this "wontfix" and closing it.

Best,

-- 
Marcin

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