Re: more alt key questions

[Richard Cobbe <cobbe@airmail.net>]

Lo, on Saturday, April 6, Bob Thibodeau did write:

> On Sat, Apr 06, 2002 at 08:32:59PM +0200, Carel Fellinger wrote:
> > On Sat, Apr 06, 2002 at 04:09:00AM -0500, Bob Thibodeau wrote:
> > > I just went back through the archives to questions I thought
> > > would help. They did, but for a different problem ( which
> > > I wasn't having).
> > > 
> > > I used to have a 'meta' key in Emacs. I also used to do
> > > Ctrl-A, Alt-d in xterms to erase a command. Now my alt
> > > key doesn't affect the letters at all (alt-x prints 'x').
> > > 
> > > I can still Ctrl-Alt-Fx to switch consoles and
> > > Alt-TAB switches windows in Icewm.
> > 
> > Could it be that your window manager thinks alt keys are for him?
> 
> I tried without a window manager with the same same results.
> No menu, of course, but no effect from the alt keys.

First step: see what keysym your alt keys are generating.  Run xev (from
the xbase-clients package), make sure the new window has focus, and hit
both alt keys.  If you want the plastic bump labeled `alt' on your
keyboard to act as meta in emacs, then you should see something like the
following:

KeyPress event, serial 27, synthetic NO, window 0x1600001,
    root 0x31, subw 0x0, time 223019973, (56,121), root:(810,145),
    state 0x0, keycode 64 (keysym 0xffe7, Meta_L), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 characters:  ""

KeyRelease event, serial 27, synthetic NO, window 0x1600001,
    root 0x31, subw 0x0, time 223020047, (56,121), root:(810,145),
    state 0x8, keycode 64 (keysym 0xffe7, Meta_L), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 characters:  ""

KeyPress event, serial 27, synthetic NO, window 0x1600001,
    root 0x31, subw 0x0, time 223020300, (56,121), root:(810,145),
    state 0x0, keycode 113 (keysym 0xffe8, Meta_R), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 characters:  ""

KeyRelease event, serial 27, synthetic NO, window 0x1600001,
    root 0x31, subw 0x0, time 223020366, (56,121), root:(810,145),
    state 0x8, keycode 113 (keysym 0xffe8, Meta_R), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 characters:  ""

If you see different keysyms, then your X keyboard settings are off.
Check your X server configuration file or use xmodmap(1) or xkeycaps to
adjust this.

If you don't see any events in response to you hitting the Alt keys,
then something (probably your window manager) is intercepting the keys
before it gets to the server.  Adjust your WM config.  (Based on your
description above, though, I don't think this is happening.)

HTH,

Richard


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