[ale] Xterm gets weird, caches chars until space or arrow

[Mike Harrison]

Somehow on my main desktop system (Ubuntu 9.10)
I have mysteriously enabled a "feature"
that for no apparent reason changes the
way it works, even on my local machine.

It'll be working just fine, and then
it starts caching my keystrokes. They
appear as smaller letters, inverse video,
but don't actually get sent to local or remote
system until I type a [space] or use an arrow key.

It seems to be an intended behavior I am
causing somehow, or triggered by something else
going on. I thought it was a glitchy bandwidth mode,
but I have opened up purely local windows and
it seems to work the same... it just starts.

If I close the xterm session and start another,
it all works well again. I've been googling for
clues for days, reading the man pages, etc..
but I either don't know what to call it
or it's a unique bug.

Oh.. yeah, I've re-installed Xterm with no change..

Anyone else seen this?