Re: emacs on a text console - please help me overcome the shock

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2011 08:55:34 +0100 (BST)
> From: rdiezmail-emacs@yahoo.de
> 
> The console mode has been a shock.

It gets better as you get accustomed to it ;-)

> There is no mouse at all. I cannot navigate the menus as usual, menu-bar-open 
> is weird and unfriendly.

Yes, menus don't work on a TTY, except via text emulation through the
minibuffer.  Emacs supports a GPM build, which will then let you use
the mouse on a TTY, but I don't think this works via SSH, only on a
real console.

> I don't want to use the ESC key as a prefix for anything, and that is 
> normally fine under X Windows. I mean, most of the time, if I press ESC, it 
> just makes the current panel full screen, or it aborts what I'm doing. 
> However, in the console I have to press ESC three times. How can I make ESC 
> react at the first press?

Configure your telnet client, whatever it is, to produce ESC when you
press the Alt key, and Bob's your uncle.

> I also use F2 to set bookmarks, and F2 alone continues to work, but Ctrl+F2 
> does not. There are many other key combinations that don't work properly.

It depends on the type of the TTY your telnet client emulates.  What
does the TERM variable say on the remote machine when you login?

Find the most sophisticated TTY type that your telnet client supports,
and set TERM to that TTY type.  See the files in lisp/term directory
for the various TTYs supported by Emacs.  In general, if your telnet
client supports xterm, try that first.