Injecting keystrokes on console

Question

I normally use emacs (on Linux) running in windowing mode. I have bound a number of functions to special keypresses such as <C-return> and <kp-add>.

Ocasionally, I'm forced to run emacs in a text console, where some of the keypresses cannot be detected.

Is there a way I can tell a console-based emacs, "Pretend I just pressed <kp-add>"?

Answer 1

For keys which a terminal can't even send unmodified (which I suspect is the case with <kp-add>), you will need to bind some key which can be sent by the terminal.

You can bind a key to the keyboard macro [kp-add] in order that the alternative key sequence does whatever <kp-add> would have done:

(global-set-key (kbd "C-c p") (kbd "<kp-add>"))

You could even call a macro without a key binding:

M-: (execute-kbd-macro (kbd "<kp-add>")) RET

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Alternatively, you could use function-key-map (or the terminal-local local-function-key-map) to directly map the key sequences like so:

(define-key function-key-map (kbd "C-c p") (kbd "<kp-add>"))

in which case Emacs translates C-c p to <kp-add> (as opposed to calling a macro which in turn simulates typing <kp-add>).

In practice, both methods ought to do the job.

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<C-return> would be similar, but C-RET can be sent via event-apply-control-modifier like so:

C-x@cRET

If the terminal can send the unmodified key, you can use this approach to send a modified variant. Type C-x@C-h for the list of supported modifiers.