Using Terminal.app with X11

Question

Dear Apple Discussions,
I am trying to get X11 and Terminal.app to work together. I read on the forums here that it is possible by going here.
I followed the instructions to the best of my abilities, yet when I try and open up Emacs in Terminal.app (yes, I downloaded fink and installed the windowed version) I don't get a new window (yes, X11 is running).
When open up a Terminal window I get the message:
DISPLAY has been set to .0
which seems to me to be incorrect.
Any ideas?
On a side note, is there a way of changing the META key from being ESC to ALT as it is supposed to be?
Thanks and sorry if there was a similar post to this, but I couldn't come up with a good query.

Answer 1

Hi AppleMonkey,
   I'm a little confused by this discussion of the ALT key as Apple keyboards don't have an ALT key. Thus, I assume that you have a keyboard designed for one of those other types of computers. Anyway, X11 does use the ALT key terminology so we do have to discuss it regardless of what type of keyboard you have.
   Long ago someone posted instructions for this that added both Alt_L and Alt_R to Mod1, like so:
clear Mod1
keycode 66 = Alt_L
keycode 69 = Alt_R
add Mod1 = Alt_L
add Mod1 = Alt_R
   Of course the main problem is to fix your ~/.xinitrc. The reason that your X11 quits is because X11 replaces it's init process with the execution of the ~/.xinitrc. When that script quits, the process ends, as you observed. The way to keep it running is to replace the script process with a new process that is then in control of XWindows. Traditionally, this process is the window or desktop manager and process substitution is accomplished with the "exec" command. By default the last command in Apple's /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc is:
exec quartz-wm
which passes control of the XWindows process to Apple's Quartz window manager. That default xinitrc also contains commands that process the ~/.Xmodmap file and it is invoked automatically if you have no ~/.xinitrc. Thus, if you're using Apple's X11, it should be sufficient to delete your ~/.xinitrc. Alternatively, you could copy that default file to your home directory with:
cp /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc ~/.xinitrc
If you're using some other version of X11, you should still use the above command to copy in the default xinitrc and then customize it to suit your needs. However, make sure that the "exec" command is the last one in the script and that every other command returns immediately.
Gary
~~~~
   It's a funny thing that when a woman hasn't got anything
   on earth to worry about, she goes off and gets married.