"Alt+=", used by emacs, is not passed to terminal, with or without "Alt as Meta key"

Hi, I’m trying Terminus and I mainly use emacs for programming. I found that many keystrokes didn’t work on emacs (everything based on Alt), then I found that I had to check the option to use “Alt key as Meta key” in Terminus settings.

With or without enabling this, I still have issues with “Alt + =”, which should display the number of characters/words in the selected region. I can select regions, I can copy paste, I can do every hotkey with Alt except “Alt + =”.

I use Terminus 1.0.65 on Fedora (running as a standard user, not as root). Here is my config:

hotkeys:
  shell: {}
  new-tab:
    - - Ctrl-Shift-T
  zoom-out:
    - - Ctrl-Shift-6
  zoom-in: []
  close-tab:
    - - Ctrl-Shift-W
  next-tab:
    - - Ctrl-Tab
    - - Ctrl-PageDown
  previous-tab:
    - - Ctrl-Shift-Tab
    - - Ctrl-PageUp
  tab-1:
    - - Ctrl-Shift-1
  tab-2:
    - - Ctrl-Shift-2
  tab-3:
    - - Ctrl-Shift-3
  tab-4:
    - - Ctrl-Shift-4
  tab-5:
    - - Ctrl-Shift-5
  tab-6:
    - - Ctrl-Shift-6
  tab-7:
    - - Ctrl-Shift-7
  tab-8:
    - - Ctrl-Shift-8
  tab-9:
    - - Ctrl-Shift-9
  tab-10:
    - - Ctrl-Shift-0
terminal:
  colorScheme:
    name: Solarized Dark
    foreground: '#708284'
    background: '#001e27'
    cursor: '#708284'
    colors:
      - '#002831'
      - '#d11c24'
      - '#738a05'
      - '#a57706'
      - '#2176c7'
      - '#c61c6f'
      - '#259286'
      - '#eae3cb'
      - '#001e27'
      - '#bd3613'
      - '#475b62'
      - '#536870'
      - '#708284'
      - '#5956ba'
      - '#819090'
      - '#fcf4dc'
  frontend: hterm
  ligatures: false
  background: colorScheme
  cursor: block
  font: DejaVu Sans Mono
  fontSize: 16
  environment: {}
  shell: /bin/bash
  bell: visual
  bracketedPaste: false
  scrollOnInput: true
  altIsMeta: true
appearance:
  css: ''
  dock: 'off'
enableAnalytics: false
pluginBlacklist: []
vibrancy: true
vibrancyType: blur
titleControl: {}

Here is what I see on screen when I try every Alt keystroke in cat with french (AZERTY) layout (note that every key returns its uppercase equivalent in Terminus, like in QWERTY where you don’t need Shift to write numbers, while xfce4-terminal displays the correct ones) :

Key          On Terminus              On xfce4-terminal
---------------------------------------------------------
Alt + ²           ^['                         ^[²
Alt + &           ^[1                         ^[&
Alt + é           ^[2                         ^[é
Alt + "           ^[3                         ^["
Alt + '           ^[4                         ^['
Alt + (           ^[5                         ^[(
Alt + -           ^[6                         ^[-
Alt + è           ^[7                         ^[è
Alt + _           ^[8                         ^[_
Alt + ç           ^[9                         ^[ç
Alt + à      (nothing)                        ^[à
Alt + )           ^_                          ^[)
Alt + =      (nothing)                        ^[=

I have the “Alt + =” issue on AZERTY and QWERTY layouts. This keyboard shortcut, and every keyboard shortcut possible, work perfectly in xfce4-terminal.

[thistlillo]

I have the same problem with other shortcuts, e.g. ctrl+x ctrl+s, ctrl+s is not passed to the terminal. I am not able to find the ‘xterm frontend’: where can I find it?

Disabling the ctrl+s shortcut has been cumbersome: I had to insert ctrl+shift+s, then it got disabled.

[Eugeny]

No problem - I’m going to make xterm the default frontend in the future.