I should have explained better: I want to type the accented characters the same way I type them into other OS X text fields, and not in a non-standard, emacs-sp

I should have explained better: I want to type the accented characters the same way I type them into other OS X text fields, and not in a non-standard, emacs-specific way. I want to hold down the option key and press another key to get the character I need. That's why using Terminal's all-or-nothing option of mapping option to meta doesn't work.