Re: Emacs and the ALT key.
I posted a lengthy description of how to deal with this back in August (the problem
was introduced with hamm). I'll repost the content here:
This problem has come up so many times since hamm started getting used
that it almost merits its own HOWTO. What's happened is that you've
upgraded X and now you are using the XKEYBOARD extension. As you've
noticed, the ALT key now does ALT and the "windows" key is now the
META key. I've argued several times that this is a bug since it
changes behavior. Alas no one listens to this raving madman. Where's
whatcha do (as root):
sed -e 's/Alt_L/Foo_L/' -e 's/Alt_R/Foo_R/' < /usr/lib/X11/xkb/symbols/us |\
sed -e 's/Meta_L/Alt_L/' -e 's/Meta_R/Alt_R/' |\
sed -e 's/Foo_L/Meta_L/' -e 's/Foo_R/Meta_R/' > /usr/lib/X11/xkb/symbols/us.new mv
/usr/lib/X11/xkb/symbols/us /usr/lib/X11/xkb/symbols/us.old
mv /usr/lib/X11/xkb/symbols/us.new /usr/lib/X11/xkb/symbols/us
(Now restart X and Things should work normally.
Michael Symalla wrote:
> Dear Debian users,
>
> can anyone help me to let my Alt-key be the metakey in emacs? Now I am
> using the ESC key, which works fine but is not as comfortable as the ALT
> key.
>
> Thanks a lot.
> --
> Bye
> Mitch
>
> --
> Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe debian-user-request@lists.debian.org < /dev/null
Havoc Pennington wrote:
> On Wed, 12 May 1999, Allen B. Riddell wrote:
> >
> > the ALT key (on my PC keyboard) doesn't seem to work in emacs.. It works in
> > netscape -- and aside from that, I have absolutely no problems at all with
> > anything...
> >
>
> Probably the "Windows" key (if you have one) is bound to the Meta keysym,
> which is what Emacs is looking for; I don't think Emacs uses the Alt
> keysym at all by default. If you don't have a Windows key, you need to
> move Meta to some other key of your choice. (Many people have the physical
> Alt key send both Alt and Meta keysyms, which is technically wrong but
> works nice in practice, since few apps use both keysyms. However, XEmacs
> insists on complaining about it every time you start up.)
>
> That said, I'm not sure how to do this without Xmodmap. Perhaps it will
> help to know what you're trying to achieve though. :-)
>
> Havoc
>
> --
> Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe debian-user-request@lists.debian.org < /dev/null
--
Jens B. Jorgensen
jjorgens@bdsinc.com
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