[Bug-readline] Problem with readline or ncurses

[Fredrik Tolf]

Hi!

I started having problems with readline after a recent update of
ncurses, and currently I am very unsure if the problem is with readline
or with ncurses, so I' sending this mail to both.

I noticed that my xterms suddenly didn't want to send Alt/Meta key
combinations as Esc+button anymore, but with the 8th bit set, which I've
always thought sucks (it doesn't exactly work very well when typing
8-bit characters).

At first, I thought the fault was with xterm, but after some debugging,
it seems that it is readline which always sends the terminfo "mm" string
whenever the "km" capability is present. The fault started appearing
since the latest ncurses update contained a new xterm terminfo file
which has the mm and mo strings (the old one didn't, it seems).

However, I'm not sure just how to interpret the "km" capability.
According to the terminfo(5) manpage, it seems it only applies to
terminals that have a Meta key that sets the 8th bit, but then it is
kind of unclear whether it should be present in xterm, since that is
configurable in xterm. I also got the feeling that "km" is used more
generically than that, to rather indicate the presence of a Meta key,
regardless of whether it sends escape combinations or 8-bit characters,
and in that case, I would think it is a fault with readline for always
sending "mm" when "km" is present.

So how is it, really? Should terminfo be fixed, should readline be
fixed, or should I just locally patch my terminfo since I configure my
xterms to use escape combinations? (Then again, if I don't do that, how
am I supposed to get UTF-8 input working in xterm?)

Fredrik Tolf