MS-DOS
MS-DOS Display
The PC keyboard maps use the left ALT key as the META key.
You have two choices for emulating the SUPER and HYPER keys:
choose either the right CTRL key or the right ALT key by
setting the variables dos-hyper-key and dos-super-key to 1
or 2 respectively. If neither dos-super-key nor
dos-hyper-key is 1, then by default the right ALT key is
also mapped to the META key. However, if the MS-DOS international
keyboard support program `KEYB.COM' is installed, Emacs will
not map the right ALT to META, since it is used for
accessing characters like ~ and @ on non-US keyboard
layouts; in this case, you may only use the left ALT as META
key.
The variable dos-keypad-mode is a flag variable that controls
what key codes are returned by keys in the numeric keypad. You can also
define the keypad ENTER key to act like C-j, by putting the
following line into your `_emacs' file:
;; Make the Enter key from the Numeric keypad act as C-j. (define-key function-key-map [kp-enter] [?\C-j])
The key that is called DEL in Emacs (because that's how it is
designated on most workstations) is known as BS (backspace) on a
PC. That is why the PC-specific terminal initialization remaps the
BS key to act as DEL; the DEL key is remapped to act
as C-d for the same reasons.
Emacs built for MS-DOS recognizes C-BREAK as a quit
character, just like C-g. This is because Emacs cannot detect
that you have typed C-g until it is ready for more input. As a
consequence, you cannot use C-g to stop a running command
(see Quitting). By contrast, C-BREAK is detected
as soon as you type it (as C-g is on other systems), so it can be
used to stop a running command and for emergency escape
(see Emergency Escape).
Emacs on MS-DOS supports a mouse (on the default terminal only). The mouse commands work as documented, including those that use menus and the menu bar (see Menu Bar). Scroll bars don't work in MS-DOS Emacs. PC mice usually have only two buttons; these act as Mouse-1 and Mouse-2, but if you press both of them together, that has the effect of Mouse-3.
Emacs built for MS-DOS supports clipboard operations when it runs on Windows. Commands that put text on the kill ring, or yank text from the ring, check the Windows clipboard first, just as Emacs does on X Windows (see Mouse Commands). Only the primary selection and the cut buffer are supported by MS-DOS Emacs on Windows; the secondary selection always appears as empty.
Due to the way clipboard access is implemented by Windows, the length of text you can put into the clipboard is limited by the amount of free DOS memory that is available to Emacs. Usually, up to 620KB of text can be put into the clipboard, but this limit depends on the system configuration and is lower if you run Emacs as a subprocess of another program. If the killed text does not fit, Emacs prints a message saying so, and does not put the text into the clipboard.
Null characters also cannot be put into the Windows clipboard. If the killed text includes null characters, Emacs does not put such text into the clipboard, and prints in the echo area a message to that effect.
The variable dos-display-scancodes, when non-nil,
directs Emacs to display the ASCII value and the keyboard scan code of
each keystroke; this feature serves as a complement to the
view-lossage command, for debugging.
MS-DOS
MS-DOS Display