So in my BLFS8 system I have compiled irssi. This is an ncurses irc program (not in the BLFS book) that I've used in various distros for years. The compile and install ran fine. The program runs fine execpt for one thing...

In irc, to switch between each channel window, one uses alt and anumber key. So to do go "window" #2, press alt-2. Right. In my LFS system the alt-2 (or alt-1, alt 3, etc) key is instead interpreted as a superscipt character, not a control key.

Is it irssi at fault? xterm? I have not compiled any other terminal program so diagnosis is limited.

Has anyone else compiled irssi in their [b]lfs system? Do you get this problem?

I have irssi running in "Terminator" and alt numbers works fine here. Tried it with xterm and no dosn't work the same

In your .Xresources file in home directory put this line:

and your alt problem will be solved. It is described in man page of xterm.

edit: Forgot to mention, you need to do xrdb -merge .Xresources after you do it. Also, there are 2 more ways to achieve same thing. One is to do Ctrl + left click of mouse and that will show main menu options of Xterm where you need to check meta sends escape option, which is not permanent solution. Other is in .Xresources too but involves more settings and defines alt separately from meta key.

Ah, interesting. Thank you.

Double-checking with the xterm man page confirms, save for one difference. Nowhere in the man page was there mention of an .XResources file. On the other distro, where irrsi & xterm are working, there was no such file. However, as indicated by the xterm man page, there is an XTerm file. I added that "xterm*eightBitInput: false" line to my XTerm file, started a new xterm, and bam: success. Irssi now handles keys correctly in xterm, yay. Bonus: I did not need to issue that xrdb command.

It is .Xresources and before that it was .Xdefaults. That is not xterm file, that is general file for settings of various applications under X. For example, Emacs respects settings in .Xresources too. Look here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/X_resources (there is link to setting xterm there too).