[comp.sys.mac.comm] Summary of Emacs-friendly terminal emulators

tldavis@athena.mit.edu (Timothy L. Davis) (05/03/91)

Over the past month I've received 11 replies to my question:
What terminal emulators work well with Gnu Emacs?
I was specifically interested in using option as the meta-key instead
of the ESC prefix, ability to generate all control characters (including 
cntrl-space, control-^, etc.), using the mouse for cursor positioning, and
variably large # of rows and columns.

I was pleasantly surprised by the result:  
	3 votes for MacKermit: does almost all I asked.
	3 votes for VersaTerm/VT Pro, which would do everything given
		a macro packages such as QuickKeys
	1 vote for MacLayers, which reportedly uses opt+command for META.
		I couldn't get this form of META to work. a high-bit stripper
		somewhere?
	1 vote for "termyulator", which I haven't heard of before, but is
		supposed to be extensible via XCMDs.

MacKermit does most of what I wanted, and more.  I was wisely warned that
my negative premonitions about MacKermit, based on an older version, 
were totally wrong.  The latest MacKermit (version 0.98(62)) is MUCH 
improved, and is really quite versatile.  With extended-length (1K) 
packets enabled, I get file transfer rates about equal to those of Zterm.  

And re: Emacs:
The META key can be easily mimicked in "modifiers" by specifying \033 for 
as a prefix character whenever option is held down.  
All the "missing" control keys can be programmed as "key macros".  Holding
down option causes the mouse to create cursor-movement commands for mouse 
clicks.  And, kermit correctly handles an increased number of columns.
Best of all, it's free!

Thanks to all who responded.

Tim Davis (tldavis@athena.mit.edu)

zaccone@jasper.bucknell.edu (zaccone - 1393) (05/03/91)

Where is MacKermit 0.98(62)?  All machines that I have checked have
version 0.98(57).

Rick Zaccone
--
zaccone@bucknell.edu