Postby gawrilow » 30 Jul 2017, 19:04
polymake (via GNU readline) interprets as a help key anything which is returned by tgetent for the 'k1' entry code (cf. man terminfo for the exhausting list of key codes). Maybe your terminal type is somewhat exotic (will say, Apple screwed it up somehow).
The first aid should be to lift the curse from your '1' key. To this end, please open your preferences file ~/.polymake/prefer.pl in a text editor, look for the line containing $help_key, uncomment it, and change the value assigned there to something which would not collide with normal alphanumeric keys, e.g. '_F2' for the function key F12. Then start polymake and verify that all normal symbol keys are working properly.
Later you might want to figure out how to map a function key of your choice to the help function (sometimes it might prove useful, e.g. when you typed in a function name and forgot the order of arguments.) Then you can edit the file prefer.pl again, or use the set_custom command from the polymake shell (albeit the effect will become perceptible only in the next session). Maybe our Mac gurus will find a proper mapping in the meanwhile, then we'll post the solution here.