Re: alt key?

[Ionel Mugurel Ciobîcă <I.M.Ciobica@TUe.nl>]

Hi,

I haven't seen a Canadian keyboard for a Dell laptop, but why
you think that Alt+2 should give you the at symbol?

The usual way to get characters is this way:

  -  normal key
  -  with Shift
  -  with AltGr
  -  with Shift and AltGr

Combination with Ctrl and Alt are for other thinks.
If it is not configured Alt+key should give you the key
(so Alt-2 -> 2).

If you think you have a wrong configuration file just
go at the line where Alt is defined and change it.

Example:

You have:
keycode 0x40 =  Alt_L
...
add    Mod1    = Alt_L Alt_R

you want Alt to be Meta:
keycode 0x40 =  Meta_L
...
add    Mod4    = Meta_L

you want Alt to be AltGr:
keycode 0x40 =  Mode_switch
...
add    Mod5    = Mode_switch


xkeycaps can help you to configure your keyboard. Save the changes
in a file which you can read it at login time with xmodmap.


Ionel


P.S. Meta is not Alt and in not AltGr. Meta is the key which add the
eight bit to the character you press. So Meta-n = î (i^),
Meta-i = é (e'), Meta-g = ç (c,), etc. because ``n'' have the bits
01101110 and ``i circumflex'' have the bits 11101110.
(ascii 11101110 gives you:
ASCII 14/14 is decimal 238, hex ee, octal 356, bits 11101110: meta-n)




În data de  6/10/2001, 13:45:13, Philippe Leroux a scris:
> hi,
> I've just installed debian (potato) on my dell laptop
> an ispiron 8100. it works fine, execpt the alt keys are short cutted for an other use.
> i have a french canadian keyboard, and i need the alt key to get "@??¤????[}".... caracters.
> 
> in a term, when i press alt+2 to get @, it gives me the line : "(arg 2)"
> and in an editor i don't get the @ but 2 or nothing.
> under Xfree (ver 4.1.0) I use ca_enhanced. it works execpte for the same problem with the alt key. using xkeycaps, i see the keys are all fine.
> How do I do to fix the problem?
> thanks for your help
> Philippe