Emacs meta-key

[Nick Croft <nicko@acay.com.au>]

I have Debian woody on one machine, and in Emacs the Alt key functions as
the Meta-key. That's fine.

I installed potato on another machine (without going through slink). The
alt-key won't function as meta in Emacs on this one. I've used xev to
check. Sure enough alt is there, but not for Emacs.

I've looked int Jespersen's Emacs book; for this problem he suggests
asking your system admin. Well that's me and I'm no help. 

I've googled the topic, and got one posting to this list with the same
question but no follow-up in the thread!
___________

A related question: The .Xresources seems to get ignored by emacs when it
loads, even though netscape pays attention to the .Xresources file. ( I do
the xrdb -merge .Xresources, btw).

Any emacs users there? 

Nick.