Re: Emacs Esc- key (off topic)

[Richard Cobbe <cobbe@directlink.net>]

Lo, on Saturday, January 20, Dale Morris did write:

> My apologies for posting off topic. I want to bind the Alt key to the Meta
> key in Emacs. Is there a simple 'newbie' way to do that?

Assuming you mean in X, since this is standard on the console.

As MH <mh@seitung.net> suggested, xmodmap is one way to do this.  You can
also set up certain parameters in your XF86Config file.  My entire
"Keyboard" (sans comments) section follows; it's the Xkb* options that
handle these settings.

Section "Keyboard"
    Protocol	"Standard"
    AutoRepeat	250 30

    XkbRules    "xfree86"
    XkbModel    "pc101"
    XkbLayout   "us"
    XkbVariant  ""
    XkbOptions  ""
EndSection

I think modern versions of XF86Setup will supply different options here if
you have one of the relatively new 104-key keyboards.  By default under
those options, meta is bound to (at least) the left windows key.  I got
used to Alt being meta (it's easier to reach with my thumb, anyway), so I
kept these settings around from an earlier XF86Setup run.

If you use these settings, be aware that the two windows keys and the menu
key will not generate keysyms, but that's easy enough to fix via xmodmap.
(The keycodes for the three are, from left to right, 0x73, 0x74, and 0x75.)

Richard