I’m blogging this for posterity.
If you have problems with XTerm not working with the alt key as expected (like in ETerm or others), ctrl-left click and hold, and select Meta sends Escape
from the menu.
Problem solved.
equivocal ramblings
the occasional journal of kevin francis
Thanks. This is just great. I’ve been struggling with this since I went from KDE to IceWM (few weeks ago) and replaced Konsole with Xterm.
Awesome. I found this page via Google and it solved my meta key woes since I switched to dwm.
Anyway, you can add the following entry to your .Xresources file to make the change permanent:
XTerm*metaSendsEscape: true
To load the changes without restarting X, run
xrdb -override .Xresources
I realize this was posted 6 years ago, but you are my hero, sir.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!