Screen command character weirdness

[bobca]

I have been using the GNU screen with some headless Linux servers at work for ages. I've always logged in using Putty in Windows and things work like a charm.

Now, I have redefined the command character (for obvious reasons) in .screenrc like this:

escape ^<<

This has always worked perfectly well (ie. pressing "control" and "<" keys simultaneusly) in Putty, but it doesn't work anywhere else (e.g. ssh from xterm running on Linux).

OK, I understand now that there is no such control character as ^< in ASCII, but why this particular configuration works with Putty?

And is there a way to make it work everywhere?

[Miven]

I modified my ~/.Xmodmap to make CTRL-UpArrow and CTRL-DownArrow work real nice for vim:

keycode 109 = Control_R Mode_switch
! Mods: |Nothing|Shift|Mode_switch|Shift+Mode_switch|
! Up and Down arrows
! CTRL-Y for vim 0x19
keycode  98 = Up Up 0x19 0x19
! CTRL-E for vim 0x05
keycode 104 = Down Down 0x05 0x05

Maybe you could do something similar?